FLYBOY ACTION FIGURE COMES WITH GASMASK
	
by Jim Munroe. 
Originally published by HarperCollins in 1999, this e-book version came out in 2002. You're free to 
distribute it as long as it's copied in its entirety.
	
If you haven't already, you should swing by www.nomediakings.org -- info about my other 
projects and resources for do-it-yourself publishing await you there. I also love letters, so feel free 
to feedback at jim@nomediakings.org. 
	
***
	Fighting evil by moonlight
	Winning love by daylight
	Never running from a real fight
	She is the one named Sailor Moon!
***

	Before the time with Cass, I had only come close to doing it once since childhood. This 
all happened during my first year at the University of Toronto, characterized by predictable 
drunken stupidity. I was again unpleasantly soused, slumped in a chair in what looked to be a 
nice kitchen. It was hard to tell, because there was only a candle for light, so as to give the room 
the legislated party ambience. Specifically, it was a party full of people I didn't know.
	Regardless, I *did* want to know the girl with the short black hair and wine glass. She 
was listening to this guy go on about his film project, nodding every so often and smiling in 
inappropriate places. I remember smiling back, half-hoping half-dreading she'd catch me. I 
wished he'd shut up so I could hear her talk.
	The kitchen wasn't crowded, which was lucky considering what eventually happened. 
Just two or three pairs of conversationalists. Someone pulled up her plaid sleeve and presented 
her forearm to the candle flame. There was a wrench tattooed there, and when she flexed her 
muscle it wiggled.
	"Bilbo the Dancing Monkeywrench," she said to her friend. Her friend laughed and 
raised her glass to Bilbo.
	"This must be the party-trick segment of the evening," Film Guy said. He stepped back 
for effect, cracked his knuckles and bent his thumb all the way back. 
	It was funny he'd do that, because I often thought of my ability as a kind of extreme 
version of bending my thumb back -- ugly, unnatural and ultimately useless. 
	"Oh bra*vo* ," I muttered, but not quietly enough.
	Black-haired girl looked at me. "Well," she said, "what can *you* do?"
	I hauled myself to a standing position. "Me?" I asked her, watching the candlelight on 
her face. I noticed her mascara was fucked up, and liked her more for it. Everyone else was 
shadows, silent watchers.
	And I was really going to do it. I really was. I took a breath and prepared to step out of 
myself.
	Instead, I turned my head away and puked explosively onto the formica table I had 
been sitting at. The candle fell over and went out.
	Dazed, I leaned over the table, looking at the mess I'd made. I dry-heaved, went to sit 
on the chair again and missed. Busted my lip wide open on the metal table leg on my way down.
	"Projectile vomiting. That's really . . ."
	"That's really *something* ."
	"Yeah."
	"Do you think he was aiming for the candle?"
	There was a wave of laughter and my consciousness seemed to be borne out on it. I 
was grateful.
	
	I had a crush on this waitress at the diner near my house. She was splashy generous 
with the coffee, so I found myself at Sok quite a bit during the winter.
	"Haven't seen you in a while," Cass said, passing by with a breakfast plate.
	At first I didn't think she was talking to me. Coffee and convenient location aside, Cass 
was the biggest attraction at Sok, and now she wasn't an exhibit any longer. Now I had to talk 
to her, an exciting and nerve-racking thing. Witty repartee only comes easily to me when I'm 
with friends. It wasn't coming now, naturally, because I was thinking of it as flirting.
	"I like the patios in the summer," I said lamely as she passed. My coffee, the fourth, was 
mostly finished, and she filled it without asking.
	"What was stopping you from taking a chair and sitting out front, like Frank?" she said, 
her eyebrows arching as she nodded towards an old Italian guy. Despite the unpleasant 
weather, he sat outside, a winter-steam tendril growing out of his head.
	"Nuh-uh," I said. "You're a gawker if you do that. Too blatant."
	"That's what those patios are," Cass retorted. "Gawk Central."
	"Nuh-uh," I said. I had put some thought into it. "It's a different dynamic. If there's a 
crowd of people doing anything, then it's OK. Like dancing. All together, there's a mass 
delusion that swinging your limbs around like that is all right. But if someone's shakin' their 
booty in a bank line-up --"
	
	"Nutbar," she said, grinning with one side of her mouth.
	"Exactly. Not that I don't love dancing. I *looove* dancing. You?"
	There was a pause. In that pause, I thought two-and-one-half things. *Because it'd be a 
crime against humanity if you don't, lookin' the way you do* , and *Oh, I think she thinks I'm 
leading up to asking her out to go dancing* , and *Oh dear, should I? how very stressful --* 
	"It's all right," she said, giving me a sideways look that I was utterly unable to decipher. 
She sauntered away in that way I so admired, getting some old guy his check.
	Admission: up until that day, my admiration of her was based mostly on her body. She 
would wear these track pants and T-shirt combinations that *tried* to contain those heavy 
breasts, *tried* to hide her wonderful bum, but failed delightfully. I had always considered 
*voluptuous* a polite euphemism, but then I met Cass.
	It was more than that. I won't pretend that it was a whole lot more, but she had a 
casualness that amplified her appeal immensely. No make-up, an Aunt Jemima handkerchief 
that barely kept her wiry, kinky mop of shoulder-length hair in check. And the clothes that 
looked like she might have slept in them. The sexiest of Sunday-morning-just-don't-give-a-
damn looks.
	But of course it wasn't just a *look* . For the two years I had been living in the area, 
she had been working here full time. When she took your order, fixing you with her dark eyes, 
you knew better than to mess with someone who'd been on her feet all day. Her breasts 
drooped slightly, but her slow and silent energy rolled like a thundercloud.
	"So now you come back to us, now that their patios are cold."
	I thought that was a poetic turn of phrase, but I didn't know if she intended it to be. So 
I just smiled and said, "Well, now I *appreciate* the blast of hot, greasy air when I come out of 
the cold."
	She laughed, but I felt bad for calling it greasy, even when it was. So I babbled, "I 
totally love it. I'm thinking of getting a heater that pumps out Sok air." 
	She mimed turning a dial to different settings, "Hot and Greasy . . . Smells Like Eggs . . 
." She did all this with her hand on one hip, a menu under her arm.
	I laughed, surprised and happy to see a quick wit. It wasn't the only thing she would 
surprise me with -- but it was the first.
	
	
	I was doing a lab with Mary later that week.
	"Did I tell you about her saying 'Now that their patios are cold'?" I had been going on 
about Cass all class. 
	Mary nodded, smiling. She adjusted the microscope focus with a deft finger and peered 
in. "I think I've got it. It's the second-section legs we're supposed to be examining, right?"
	"I don't know." I hadn't been concentrating on anything but recounting my 
"conversation" with Cass. 
	Mary squinted at the blackboard. It always bothered me that she didn't wear glasses. 
She was such a sensible girl otherwise. She didn't get involved with jerks, she lived frugally, it 
just didn't make sense. She would look fine in glasses -- I could clearly see her in a pair of no-
nonsense wire frames. But then, being a twenty-two-year-old virgin, I perhaps wasn't the 
definitive authority on what was socially attractive.
	Thinking this, I paused for a second, but then used my extra-powerful glasses to read 
the board.
	"Isolate second . . . section of subject. Note the . . . differences in the second set of 
legs. Add to . . . cake mix."
	Mary snorted, and crossed out *Add* .
	"What the heck is that?!" I stared in amazement at the board, my voice rising slowly but 
surely. "Cake mix? What's *wrong* with this professor?" I enjoyed the minor attention I got 
from some worried-looking people nearby. In *this* class, I was the loudmouth.
	"The entomology and cooking classes are being held together," Mary deadpanned, 
sketching in her notebook. "Part of the cost-cutting measures, I understand."
	I chuckled. I opened my notebook and started copying the insect Mary was drawing. 
Mary was the only reason I believed I had a chance of passing this course. I had taken it for 
good reasons, but about a month past the drop-out date I realized that it wasn't something I 
wanted to study. My particular area of interest, specialized as it was, would be for someone 
with a PhD to take on -- not a dabbler like me. My major was English, and at one point I was 
thinking of making it a biology/English double major. I thought again.
	It was just my latest abandoned plan for solving the mystery of my kinship with the 
*Musca domestica* . None of the answers at the back of the textbook were the ones I needed.
	"So other than the way she looks, and some witty lines, do you know anything about 
her?"
	"Nope."
	"I don't know anyone who waitresses full time. Judy does two shifts a week, and she's 
always complaining about how rude everyone is."
	"I know she's been doing it for the last two years, at least. I wonder if she complains to 
her friends?"
	"'There's this guy at work, this regular guy? He's such a creep! Always bothering me 
for refills . . .' Like that, you mean, right?"
	"She doesn't sound like that at *all* ," I said, laughing. In my best girl-voice, soft and 
gushy: "'There's this incredibly interesting guy with these cool glasses? I'm just waiting for him 
to jump my bones.' More like that."
	Mary laughed, shaking her long blonde hair, and made a correction to my drawing.
	
	A couple of days later I was doing some laundry and trying to finish off a Balzac novel. 
Exams were coming up, and one or two of the books I'd skipped in each course turned out to 
be the ones that the prof suddenly realized were *utterly seminal* works. Luckily, I had gotten 
three-quarters of the way through Balzac before I was borne away by the biology avalanche 
two months ago, so I didn't mind the pressure to finish it.
	I felt a kinship with Balzac. You gotta admire a guy who dies of a caffeine overdose. 
Shaking and babbling into the next world.
	I was sitting there thinking that, then thinking about getting my next fix, then thinking 
about where I would get it, then thinking about Cass, when she passed by the window. She was 
walking along briskly, eyes on the snow, a crazy lumpy hat on her head and a grin on her face. 
It was magical, almost as if my thinking about her had brought her into being.
	I walked to the door and opened it, thinking that I'd call out to her. She was already 
too far for anything but an outright yell to be audible, so I stopped. I could see her brown hat 
bobbing amidst the other sidewalkers. I could see the plume of icy smoke from her, rising. I 
imagined it coming out from between her lips.
	
	
	"I saw you today, passing the laundry on College," I said, immediately feeling creepy as 
I did so. *I saw you* is too too close to *I've been watching you* .
	"You mean the one near Euclid?" Her face was suddenly grave. "I saw the weirdest 
thing there once. You want a coffee and a water, right?"
	I nodded, waiting for the weirdest thing.
	She left, her eyes distant in memory recall.
	Sok was pretty empty -- it was a weekday afternoon. The old guy that was usually 
fixed outside had slipped his leash. There was a family who looked like tourists to me, a teenage 
girl and a toddler and a mom and dad. Why they were touring in winter was beyond me.
	Cass came back with my order, and was about to leave.
	"What's so scary about Miracle Wash?" I asked, snapping a sugar packet.
	"It's not scary. It's odd. I went by there one time, late night. It was dark inside, closed, 
but I guess some movement caught my eye. Then I noticed this guy sitting on a chair -- "
	"A chair *made of human bones* ?!" I suggested, eyes wide.
	Cass smirked and ignored me. "He was sitting there, reading a magazine in the little light 
that was coming in from the street. And he was barefoot."
	"What?"
	"Yeah, he was sitting with his feet curled up beside him, so I saw them clearly. Bare."
	"He was the owner, probably. Asian guy, right?"
	"Yeah, but don't you think that's weird? Bare feet in a laundromat? Those places are 
dirty -- they're where people bring their dirt, for Christ's sake."
	The look on her face appealed to me, asking me to confirm her uneasiness. I could not 
oblige. "But it's also where people go for cleanliness," I said. "It's an environment rife with 
paradox." She laughed and I was a happy boy.
	She sat down at the table next to me, and rolled her feet in circles. "It's amazing what 
you see at night, walking around the city. Stuff you never would have seen if you had just gone 
to bed. It's like stolen time. I wish I could do it more often." Someone came in and she looked 
up, but he walked to the counter and said hi to the cook.
	I was about to say *why don't you* when a parade of rape statistics marched merrily 
through my brain. "It's dangerous," I mumbled lamely.
	She shook her head. "That's not it."
	I waited for why.
	"There's . . . another reason."
	I kept my face impassive. She waited a second or two and then stood and walked 
around her tables. I was a little disappointed. Maybe if I had arched my eyebrow in playful 
curiosity, I would have gotten an answer. Maybe she wanted to tell me, but needed that extra 
prompt.
	Then again, it might have been better to keep it casual. I didn't want to get involved in 
her life too quickly, after all.
	Which, of course, was utter bullshit.
	
	There's nothing worse than seeing a fly bang itself against a wall again and again. You 
just *know* that something's gone horribly wrong in its little fly brain, all ten cells of it. I always 
wonder what drove it crazy -- a strangely shaped room, bad air, the longing for fly companions 
in a human-infested house. That last one I could have helped it with, I suppose. But who's to 
say that it was loneliness it suffered from?
	I imagined that like a simple machine, the rubber band of its mind had snapped, but 
something kept spinning regardless.
	I sat in my huge armchair and debated throwing the bug out the window (where it would 
surely freeze), or out the door (where it would annoy my roommates), or out of this astral plane 
(which would require vigorous and violent physical action).
	I did nothing. I have a special rapport with bugs, even the crazy ones. I went back to 
my studying. I was reading about pheromones. They're easily some of my favourite things from 
the insect world. I was discovering that these smelly molecular messengers can communicate 
something as complex as "The queen bee is in the hive and all is well" -- when there was a 
knock on the door.
	"The queen bee is in the hive and all is well," I called out, and Phil came in. He had a 
little smile on his face and he walked over to the window and looked out.
	"Mind if I read in here?" Phil asked after a moment of watching the snow, waving a 
book called *Games Zen Masters Play* .
	"Go ahead, see if I care," I said cheerily. "Have a seat on the bed. Not as comfy as this 
chair here, no siree, but . . ."
	"Shaddap," muttered Phil, flipping open his book. He had seen the chair sitting out in 
our neighbour's garbage too -- he'd seen it first -- but hadn't taken it because he thought it 
smelled of urine. But the smell must have been coming from something else, because once in my 
room it smelled of nothing. Phil claimed otherwise, naturally. He had been so desperate for a 
chair ever since, that he had been offering a lawn chair to guests.
	"Mmmm-m!" I said, wiggling my bum.
	Phil said nothing, his big-eyebrowed Korean face looking calm as he read his book.
	"Smells in here," he grunted after a few minutes.
	"Smells of nothing but happy-bum-sitting-pleasure," I burbled. I turned the page to 
reveal a cross-section of a bee, illustrated in unlikely colours.
	Another few minutes passed. "Urine."
	"Sorry, no urine."
	We were likely to spend the next few hours in this slow-motion argument. But my flying 
friend interceded.
	"What the hell is wrong with that fly?!" said Phil, his teeth suddenly bared in frustration.
	"Loony," I said.
	"I'm gonna kill it."
	"Don't kill it. It's a visitor."
	Phil closed his book and started tracking the fly.
	"Isn't there some zen game you can play? To make you clear your mind like the stream 
in a forest or something?"
	"The only zen game I'm learning is how to shoot lasers from my eyes to fry stupid fly-
loving white boys." Phil got up from the bed and held the book like a weapon. I leaped up from 
the chair and opened the door.
	"Flee, fly, flee! The evil Asian's going to crush you!"
	The fly, beyond hearing, bounced against the wall three more times and then *whack!* 
The book permanently united it with my wall.
	"Aw, look at all that blood, Phil!"
	There was a splotch almost an inch round on my white, non-glossy-paint wall. Phil 
looked at his book with amazement. He flicked the fly into my little garbage can. "There's a 
tremendous amount of blood. How could a fly have that much blood?"
	"My wall . . . a testament to your barbarism." I was vaguely annoyed, but not enough to 
pretend I wasn't, which is what I did when I was *really* mad . . .
	"It must have been drinking blood. That's why it was crazy . . . a poster will cover that 
up, hey? I'm sorry."
	"You'd like that, wouldn't you. Another cover-up. No, people will know about this, 
Phil Lee. People will know about you."
	He slunk out of the room. "Sorry."
	I went back to my book.
	
	I walked into Sok, stupidly. I usually go in only if Cass is there but I was walking in a 
daze, and once I was in, I was in. The cook had already nodded hello and as I considered 
leaving I had a daymare:
	*The cook, young but working towards being one of those classic diner cooks with the 
stubble and extra flesh, says, "Hey Cass, your boyfriend came in."* 
	*"Who?" she'd say, already annoyed.* 
	*"Your boyfriend with the glasses and the books. He comes in, looks around and sees 
you're not here, then turns around and leaves."* 
	*"Ah, probably forgot he had a class to go to," she'd say with a contemptuous curl to 
her lip, and they'd laugh together.* 
	So to avoid that almost-tangible possibility, I took a seat at the counter.
	"Can I get some fries?"
	The cook nodded. I had a novel in my bag, but I took out my agenda book instead. I 
looked over the stuff on tomorrow -- I was going to a seminar on bug catching that the library 
was putting on for free, and I had also told Ken that I'd watch a movie with him. I was thinking 
I might be able to convince him to do the bug thing when my fries arrived.
	"Well done, right?"
	"Yeah, thanks!" I was always caught off guard when people recognized me. I figured I 
was pretty anonymous, bland even. Yet this was the second time in Toronto anyone at a public 
place had recognized me -- maybe I was in Sok more than I thought. I was a "regular," I 
realized with pleasure -- not a "fixture" like Frank, but a "regular." I ate my fried potatoes with a 
new relish, remembering all my past plates. I looked over at the bags of fries, covered in icy 
frosting, and gauged that I had probably bought two bags' worth in my combined visits. I was 
wondering how much coffee I had bought when Cass came in, complaining about the sleet.
	The cook smiled to himself and flipped a burger like a coin, as if he was passing the time 
rather than working.
	I went back to my agenda book, staring at it blankly in mid-chew. I had been prepared 
to be bored here for a while, then leave, and mark it up to penance for wanting Cass. But now 
she was here, lively and damp and cursing. I honestly felt my nerves tingling.
	I tried to hide my happiness, only let a bit out on my face, but she grinned widely and 
smacked me on the shoulder and I felt my face burning. Luckily she went rooting for her apron 
behind the counter, and my blush had cooled by the time she popped her head up again.
	"What's your name, anyway?" she said as she tied a bow behind her back.
	"Ryan," I said, closing my agenda book. I wished I hadn't. I felt like that action said, 
*Let's have a conversation, now that you have disrupted me* . And that the book itself 
(University of Toronto emblazoned on the cover) singsonged, *Look,I'm a smarty-pants stu-
dent!* 
	"Cassandra," she said, offering a hand that was chilled and damp. I mentally rewrote 
Cass as Cassandra in the blackboard of my brain. 
	"Ahh, your hand is so warm," she said. "So, Ryan, have you lived in this frozen 
wasteland all your life?"
	I thought she meant Canada. "Um, yes. What about you?"
	"Vancouver, until about two years ago." I could tell that she was going to regale me 
about the beauty of Lotusland, where it never snows and pot grows between cracks in the 
sidewalk. I steeled myself, waiting for the Cliché Train to pulp me.
	"Only on the nastiest of days do I miss the weather there. Van winters are hell. It's dark 
and wet for four months, and it's like this mass experiment in light deprivation. People wilt."
	She looked around the diner. Except for me, it was empty. "'Course, mean-ass days 
have their plusses."
	"Why'd you come to Toronto?" I said. She sat down and spun around on a counter 
stool two away from me.
	"Well, my band broke up here, mid-tour. Plus I wanted to live for a while in a place 
other than Vancouver, and Toronto seemed as good a place as any."
	"What band?"
	"Fuck You, Mr. Man."
	I stared at her.
	"Never heard of it, eh?"
	"Oh! That's the name! I thought I was being too nosy."
	She laughed. "It's funny we didn't get that reaction more often, but we were well 
known in the hardcore scene."
	"Like hardcore punk rock?"
	She nodded.
	"What happened on tour?" I asked, thrilled to have her ear for so long. I had the 
uncanny sensation of being the shy guy in the movie, who, because of a disaster or an alien 
invasion or some other happy circumstance, is trapped with a beautiful girl in a diner or an 
abandoned cinema. They pass the time by telling each other stories, dancing to old jukebox 
tunes, and necking.
	Then Frank shuffled in and ruined it all. He pulled his Maple Leafs toque off his pink 
head and despite my mental command of *counter, counter, counter,* he took a table. Coot.
	The stool squeaked when she stood. My plate glinted greasily under the lights, as a 
good diner plate should, and I tilted my head slightly to see if the refraction would reveal small 
things about the future.
	
	The man held up a jar with a label reading "Bug Cemetery." It even had a little 
gravestone on it. 
	Ken laughed and whispered, "This guy is great. He's so *deep* about the whole thing."
	I nodded and smiled, but I was a bit annoyed. It was definitely catering to children, and 
I had called ahead to make sure it wasn't going to be a kiddie thing. But Ken and I were the 
only attendees whose feet weren't dangling, and the territory he was going over was very 
familiar to me.
	"They have a tiny kingdom of their own, these little critters, so don't think you own 
them. They might bring back an army of their friends and attack you some day!" The man's face 
was pouchy but quite lively, and his little talk was better than average. It was funny (well, eight-
year-old funny) and taught that the insect world was to be marvelled at, not just observed.
	Ken was watching the kids in the audience, mostly. Making faces at one of them. I was 
glad he wasn't bored silly, because it wasn't possible to leave that small room without feeling 
like a jerk.
	But it was almost over, and the man was taking questions. One boy, his face engulfed in 
glasses, asked if it was OK to play with bugs, does it hurt them? Ken, looking at the kid, said 
*aw, what a cutie* to me.
	"I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. I'll tell you what my granddaughter does. 
When she digs in the garden, she finds these June bugs sleeping just under the surface -- they go 
there when it's cold, you see, 'cause it's warmer there. She picks them up and puts them in her 
pockets," he mimed putting something in his cardigan pocket, and patting it very gently, "and 
then she goes inside and takes them out and plays with them. They're sleepy, but then they 
warm up and frisk around, and when she gets tired of 
	playing with them she goes and tucks them into their dirt beds." The children brayed 
with delight at this last image and the kid with the question looked happy.
	"Do bugs eat people?" was the next question. It came from a big kid who knew better. 
The old man's answer was pretty honest, although he made parasites sound like pets.
	A few more questions and then it was over. At forums like these I would usually chat 
with the speaker, get a feel for how adventurous and open-minded he was. Every so often I'd 
run into a rogue scientist this way, willing to entertain even the most absurd of questions, and I'd 
offer my lab assistance. I'd usually find out, through gradual prods and such, that their open-
mindedness only extended so far -- so I couldn't trust them, ultimately. Not with the questions I 
had.
	But this guy seemed small-fry. I had heard that he was involved with some pretty 
groundbreaking stuff concerning insect myths, and I knew I had heard his name before, but it 
looked like he was more into the children angle. Still, I didn't like to think of this as a total waste 
of time, so I scribbled up a note with my number on it. His fans, a tall girl with a grave face and 
the little boy with the glasses, had books for him to sign. I passed the note to him over their 
heads and left. I glanced back through the window and saw the little boy making tiny adultlike 
gestures with his hand as his mother beamed on with pride.
	
	"So you're a real bug scenester," Ken said. "I knew you were into them, but you're like 
a mover and shaker."
	"A little bit," I said. We had gone to a restaurant to get out of the cold and to fill Ken's 
belly. He was a vegetarian, so he was eating some noodley stuff. I hadn't been here before but 
could read by the backwards name in the window that it was called Kensington Bakery.
	"I've been interested in the Little Kingdom since I was a kid. I know most of the people 
in the city who are involved with the subject, met them over the years. There aren't really all that 
many. That Crawford guy just moved to the city, so I wanted to check him out." 
	Ken was deep into his noodles, so as he nodded they bobbed up and down. He was 
one of the few people who didn't look at my interest in insects as an extended childhoodism or 
an odd fetish. He had a mind that was free of the dust and grime that most people accumulate 
over twenty years, quick to dream and laugh and slow to judge. He had old-man hair, white-
blond, with crinkly, wide, youngster-eyes.
	"I like buggies. They're nice. I think I'd like some to eat right now," he said, gnashing at 
his noodles.
	"Would you eat bugs?" I asked, thinking about the vegetarian thing.
	"If they were baked in a nice cake, I would."
	I batted a salt shaker back and forth. I had already gotten my caffeine fix, and couldn't 
really afford to be buying stuff all the time. Luckily, batting a salt shaker back and forth was free 
in most places.
	A guy with a tuft of blue hair passed by the window and waved at Ken, not stopping 
but smiling. "That crazy Mark . . . he'll catch his death of cold," said Ken. "Oh . . . you met 
Mark . . . didn't you?"
	"Don't think so."
	"At Maxwell's party. Last . . . oh, maybe you weren't there. He goes around with my 
other friend Valerie."
	I remembered meeting Valerie. It was hard to imagine her beside the guy who had just 
passed the window. Then again, Cassandra and I were hardly twins separated at birth, so that 
line of thought ended up giving me a hypo of hope.
	"She does a poetry zine, too." He mentioned the name.
	"Never heard of it," I said.
	"That's 'cause you're a jerky boy. She's published some of my pictures in it."
	"Everyone's published your pictures."
	"Yep, there's a lot of dopes out there," Ken said with a laugh. "I told you about the 
Random House deally, right?"
	I shook my head.
	"Oh! Well, they want to publish the *Definitive Baby Sneaky 5000* ," he said, making 
loopy quote marks with his fingers.
	"You're kidding! That's incredible, man!" I was amazed, jealous and amazed again. 
Ken had been publishing a comic for about a million years that he gave out for free, a mystic 
photocopy sandwich containing flashes of political fierceness and genuine oddity. 
	"Boy, was I surprised. I don't even have them all. I try to keep one of each but 
sometimes I give them all away by accident," he said, spearing his side order of raw vegetables. 
"Wow, this pepper is so fresh," he mumbled, his eyes widening.
	I was a bit baffled. "So have you signed . . . contracts and stuff? How did they find out 
about you?" I couldn't imagine how they saw Ken's black-and-white drawings as a marketable 
commodity.
	"No, it's still being worked out. They'll probably pull out," he said without apparent 
concern. "They're just trying to get deals with artists that are doing similar stuff to Palaver."
	"Who?"
	"The guy who does all the anvil things. You remember, I showed you some of his stuff . 
. . it's in this crazy colour spattering. I know I showed you."
	I was watching the girl behind the counter sell someone some seed cake. She was 
attractive, her Cantonese-accented voice was really loud, and her nail polish was sparkly. "If 
you say so." I looked back at Ken. "Do you see her nail polish?"
	He looked back and we admired it in tandem. It was silver.
	He turned again towards me. "So I'm reading this book by this guy, Genet -- it's 
wicked. It's got these thieves . . ."
	We talked for a few hours after that, about wicked thieves and other things.
	
	When I arrived at the London bus terminal, I looked for the Scary Bus Lady, who was 
the person at the counter who always seemed to be staring at you. A quick survey among 
regular bus users had revealed that I wasn't the only one to look up and find her dull gaze 
locked on my eyeballs. Except, however, when you were buying a ticket -- then it was nearly 
impossible to catch her eye. As I walked through the station she came out of the back and it 
actually took four seconds (I counted) for her to start staring. I added this information to my 
mental file marked Bus Lady, Scary.
	Dad was standing beside the car in the parking lot, facing away. He stuck up above the 
cars like a pin marking a location on a map. Usually, he had the newspaper spread out on the 
roof -- but today he was just looking out onto the road. 
	"What's up, Sid?" I said loudly, making him jerk. "The paperboy blacklist you again?"
	He mumbled something I didn't hear and got into the car.
	I opened the door and saw today's *London Free Times* on the seat. I picked it up 
and got in, thinking as I did that it was odd he had brought it but hadn't read it. I reached 
around and buckled in, glancing over at Dad when I did so.
	He was holding the steering wheel tightly and staring straight ahead. His eyes were 
squinched up, like the light was too bright or he was bracing for a punch. He said, "Your mom 
has breast cancer."
	I looked down at the paper in my lap. On it, there was a man beside an oversized 
cheque giving the camera a thumbs-up. I heard the click of the belt buckle and the car starting. 
"Are they . . . sure?" I asked.
	Dad nodded. "Pretty sure." He put his hand on the parking brake and then took it 
away. "Are you ready?" he asked me, his hand just lying there. "I mean . . . we can . . ."
	"No, I'm ready," I said.
	His hand moved back, and I watched it go about its work for a while until it came to 
rest on the steering wheel. I didn't want to look out the window at the wash of movement, for 
obscure reasons, and looked down at the man on the newspaper instead. He was a lottery 
winner, the caption said, and I could see why Dad wouldn't want to read about something like 
that at a time like this.
	Dad made a sound like he was clearing his throat, but it might have been half a cough. I 
waited, but he didn't say anything. I asked, "How long have you known?"
	"She found out this morning. Your mom called you, but you weren't in."
	I was glad I hadn't known before. The bus ride would have been hell. Instead of 
looking forward to a nice meal and maybe a bath, I would have been picturing my mother's 
funeral. 
	We rolled up to the house. I looked at it, bright and normal, and couldn't think of 
anything. I got out before he parked in the garage and stood there twisting the paper into a thick 
roll. He emerged from the garage and we went in together.
	Lisa sat there, flipping through a fashion magazine, her black hair lank and listless. "Hi," 
she said, fairly normally. I could see she had been crying, though.
	*I should have tried harder. I should have* made *her stop smoking.* 
	"You should be helping your mother," Dad said, starting to get a little mad.
	"She said she was fine."
	I realized that Mom was cooking. I was horrified. I went into the kitchen. She was 
pulling a roast out of the oven.
	"Hello, Rye, supper'll be on in five minutes. You're just in time."
	She looked normal, which was more than I could say about Dad or Lisa. "Mom, you 
shouldn't be exerting yourself. I mean, Dad said . . ." My voice hitched and I knew that it would 
crack if I pushed it on.
	Mom looked at me with a sad smile, as if I was the one suffering, and held my hand. I 
thought again about all the times we tried together to get her to stop smoking and started to cry.
	"Oh," she said, hugging me. "Don't."
	Lisa burst out crying and hugged the two of us. Dad stood nearby, a stubby glass in one 
hand.
	When Mom spoke again, her voice was thick. "I feel fine. You don't think I want to eat 
your father's cooking, do you?"
	Lisa laughed at this, a little hysterical. "Like . . . remember the charcoal burgers?" We 
all laughed a little at that infamous moment in Slint family history, and even Dad's grim face 
cracked a little.
	Mom gave us one last squeeze and said, "Let me finish dinner. Can you get those 
veggies sliced, Lisa?" 
	Lisa feigned reluctance, her face puffy with tears, then opened up the knife drawer.
	Dad and I moved out into the living room. I wanted to ask him about the tumour but I 
knew Mom would hear, and I should really ask her. It was hers, after all.
	"How'd your midterms go?" said Dad, sitting on one side of the couch. 
	I took the other side. "Not bad. Haven't got the results back yet, but the only one I'm 
worried about is bio."
	"The bug course . . . yep, one of the things you learn is," Dad paused to turn towards 
me and make sure I was listening. I already knew what he was gonna say. " . . . that some 
subjects are very interesting, but you don't want to actually study them." I had expressed this 
sentiment a few months ago, worded slightly differently, and now it was being laid before me as 
a new-found pearl of wisdom. I simply smiled and nodded, because if I said anything, he'd say: 
*No! Huh, maybe you're right -- you knew what you were talking about! Got your noggin from 
yer dad* . I reminded myself how rare it was to have a father that actually *listened* .
	"And work?" I returned.
	"Not bad, pretty good . . ." School -- check, work -- check. It was a ritual that could 
have been hollow, but it had the creamy filling of genuine caring. "They said there shouldn't be a 
problem getting some time off to be with your mom."
	It was amazing how her sickness could even change the school/work conversation, the 
most routine of routines. I realized that every discussion we'd have from now on would contain 
this knowledge just below the surface.
	*How long?* I thought. *How long would it take?* *How long did she have?* 
	My thoughts must have been on my face, because Dad put a hand on my shoulder. I 
caught a whiff of whisky as he leaned towards me, and his squeeze was a bit too hard. He 
sighed, then stood up and went into the kitchen.
	I was alone in the room, looking around at the things that Mom had chosen years ago. It 
occurred to me that coffee table was appallingly '70s, and I realized that I had never considered 
the furniture on any level except *our home's furniture* . My sister came in and caught me 
staring at the coffee table. Instead of bugging me about it, she just sat down.
	"So the Scary Bus Lady wasn't looking at me," I said suddenly, grateful for the 
unbidden topic but not really able to summon a lot of enthusiasm for it.
	"Were you buying a ticket?"
	"No, this was today. She just came out of the back, though. It took her four entire 
seconds to lock on."
	"I think she just stares at everyone who comes in."
	"Yeah." I shifted uncomfortably. My back was still sore from the ride up. I wondered if 
I had time for a bath before dinner, but then Mom came out. Mom, who despite having a 
cancer growing inside her and probably wanting a cigarette very badly was still making dinner 
for her lousy son, a selfish brute whose primary concern was his own minor back pain.
	"Suppertime."
	
	My mom's cancer changed my television viewing patterns profoundly. I was in the habit 
of flicking on the tube and surfing while eating dinner: a little bit of the news, a little bit of a 
fashion show, a little bit of the *Simpsons* rerun and then I was usually done. I figured it was 
better to sample small bits of crap rather than to eat a whole meal from one pile.
	The first day I was back from London I hunkered down in front of the tube with my 
macaroni and cheese and flicked it on. I was going back and forth, trying to find something 
interesting and artsy on the brainer channels, and passed the operation channel twice.
	On the first pass I caught the words *diagnosed with breast cancer.* My heartbeat 
speeded up as I flicked past ten channels on automatic before stopping on a music video.
	*I wonder why someone dying of a terminal disease agrees to be ogled by gawkers? 
How much do they get? Are operations that expensive in the States?* 
	I ate my macaroni. I thought about all the good food my mom made for me, and how I 
was wasting all her efforts by eating this lazy processed crap. I flicked away from the video 
where a man with a bubble guitar was soloing, sped past the operation channel and landed on a 
cartoon. But the bright sugarworld couldn't erase the glimpse I got of scalpel cutting into breast.
	As I watched *Sailor Moon* for the first time, this is what I was thinking: *How will my 
mother, who can't bear being seen in public without her make-up, deal with a missing breast? 
Why should she have to endure something that she'll find so disgraceful? Where is the justice in 
that?* 
	I remembered Mom holding me up and turning on the water in a hospital bathroom. I 
was crying from the need to pee, a thirteen-year-old man-child with his tonsils newly removed 
and swaying from the anaesthetic. Mom smoothed down my hair and called me Ryan O'Brian 
like she did when I was a kid and it made me feel less ashamed because it's OK if your mom 
sees your thing when you're a kid, it's OK if you cry, and Mom feeds you sherbet when you're 
a kid.
	"I am Sailor Moon, champion of justice and fighter of evil -- and that means you, 
Negaverse slime! Prepare to be punished!"
	I liked this tough-talking little manga girl. I put my clicker down.
	
	We stopped by Sok after class. Cassandra was working in another section. Mary got 
mint tea -- she followed some routine, a seven-herbal-brew cycle. I didn't know how she kept 
track. 
	"Don't you worry that you're using some valuable part of your brain for that? That 
you're using synaptic energy for something that is essentially useless?" I was jealous, of course.
	"It's not useless," she said, her eyebrows crimping. "It keeps my palate fresh. 
Everything loses its magic, even Chamomile." She breathed the word like it was a lover's name. 
"But Chamomile is three teas away . . . there's still Raspberry, Licorice, and Peppermint."
	"No, I understand that . . . but you could keep it on some scrap of paper instead of 
filling up brain cells."
	"I remember things without trying. Like your phone number, 535-6222. I've called you 
at home -- what? Once or twice?" She shrugged. 
	This disturbed me. I was completely reliant on my phone book and wanted other 
people to be similarly dependent. 
	"It doesn't take any energy," she said.
	"Ah," I said, pointing at her with my spoon, "no *detectable* energy. Your brain, 
however, must have finite resources, don't you think?"
	"I *think* she is wildly attractive," Mary said quietly, nodding at Cassandra. "I must tip 
my hat, sir. I expected some bimbo."
	"Really?" I said, flattered *and* hurt.
	"You'd be surprised at how many of my male friends tout some beer commercial babe 
as Aphrodite rising." She scrutinized Cassandra, who was across the restaurant. "Think she's a 
dyke?"
	"No," I said too quickly, a chill hand fondling my stomach.
	"She kinda dresses like one, all sloppylike. Well, you'll find out. And report back to 
me. Right?"
	I nodded, numbly. Was she interested for me? Or for herself? Was she hinting at 
something? Should I ask, or what? It didn't matter to me, either way. I had never known any 
homosexuals in London, so I didn't know what they dressed like or really anything about them 
except for movie stereotypes. 
	"91887542," she said, and took a sip of her tea.
	*Was that some kind of code?* My mouth opened and closed.
	"Your student number. Remember that time you were inquiring about dropping bio, and 
they asked for your number?" She tapped her head and smiled. "Now you don't think I 
memorized that on purpose, did you?"
	"How much did you study for the bio midterm?" I said, thinking of the all-nighters I'd 
pulled over the years.
	"I learned long ago never to disclose that information," she said airily, "lest I be 
lynched."
	Frank came in and unwound the huge scarf that held his golf hat in place. He apparently 
had a new hat for each day. An old couple waved to him and he smiled weakly as he shuffled to 
his counter seat.
	"How's an oldster like that walk around on a day like today?" Mary asked. "His bones 
must be thin little icicles."
	"Frank makes it out most days. This is where he gets his Ovaltine. Been drinking it for 
the past sixty years."
	"There's no palate variation *there* ," Mary said disapprovingly.
	"Nope."
	"I have to tell you something, Ryan," Mary said, all of a sudden.
	I raised my eyebrows. *Is this where she tells me that she's  --* 
	"I'm going to smoke a cigarette."
	I took a sip of coffee. I couldn't believe it. "My mom's got breast cancer."
	She got up. "Now I really need a smoke."
	I sat there while she went to the counter and bought a box of low-tar death. I watched 
as she sat down and opened it up. I waited till she inhaled, then began. "I went back to London 
last month. She had just had her physical, and they found a tumour on her breast that . . . wasn't 
benign." For some reason I couldn't bring myself to say *malignant* .
	Mary carefully blew the smoke away from me, watching me with round sympathy eyes.
	"Anyways, she's in a good mood. She made an amazing trifle for dessert." *What the 
hell did that matter?* 
*	* "How's your sister handling it?"
	"Fluctuating between hysteria and ignoring it."
	"Sounds like the normal routine," she said, managing to inject sympathy into the cold 
fact. "You feel guilty, right?"
	I nodded.
	"My brother was the guilty one in our family. He had tried to help Dad to quit every 
Father's Day." Mary's dad had died last Christmas, and she had borne it with hard-headed 
sadness. I didn't know her as well then, but I remembered being in awe of her humour and 
strength.
	"I keep saying to myself, 'One more time might have done it. One more time.'"
	"Stop it!" Mary gave me an anguished, annoyed look and waved her cigarette. "You 
know how stupid that is. You can't control the actions of others. You were there for her, but 
she made her choices. Now let it go, you self-obsessed fuck." She stabbed out her cigarette.
	She was right, of course. It had very little to do with Mom, or even the idea that she 
was dying -- I hadn't even begun to deal with that. It was about Me, about my frustration at not 
being able to control my loved ones.
	"Plus -- it's not even necessarily from smoking. It's not lung cancer." Mary looked 
sombrely at the shape of her cigarette. "I appreciated your support when I tried to quit, but it 
can't come from outside. I've been buying a pack a week for the last month."
	"Which is better than a pack a day," I said to hide my shock.
	"Yeah, but it looks like it'll work back to that. A few more a day . . . you know."
	The guy who was waiting on us swung by on refill duty. I poured a packet of sugar into 
my coffee, then put it on the pile of empties.
	"Holy, talk about addictions," Mary said, counting them. "They're like scalps, or animal 
skins . . . sugar skins." She lit up another smoke.
	"Yeah, I'm up to about four cups a day. Six sometimes. But I'm starting to worry about 
my bladder."
	"Ulcers?"
	"You can get ulcers in your bladder?" I said, horrified. 
	She shrugged. 
	"It's just that I drink water with coffee, to counteract the dehydration effects. But I take 
a dozen pisses in a day. Sometimes twice in an hour. I'm just worried I'll wear out my 
equipment, you know."
	"I have to --"
	"Me first," I said, leaping up and heading for the washroom. 
	I returned to our table and relieved Mary. The diner was getting a little busy as 
dinnertime approached. Mary's fries arrived, and I debated whether it would be stealing when I 
knew they would be freely offered to me. The debate lasted until I finished salting them.
	"Your friend left," Mary said as she sat down. She took a fry. "Winked at me and 
walked out the door."
	"Sure she wasn't winking at the place where I was last seen?" I said flippantly, but felt 
disappointed. My plan had been to ask her out today, and find out if she was interested once 
and for all, damn it. I was going to follow Mary out, lag a little behind, then casually pop the 
question. I figured having Mary there was a plus -- she would see that I had friends, at least. I 
almost always came in there alone, and I was worried that I seemed like a loser.
	"I was gonna ask her out," I said, pronouncing *ask* like *axe* to show how casual I 
was.
	"Too bad you didn't let me go first," she said vindictively. "She walked right by the 
table on the way to the door. Then I wouldn't have had that little accident on my way to the 
Little Girls' Room. Watch your step on the stairs next time you use the facilities" --  she looked 
at her watch --  "which should be like, five minutes from now, eh?"
	"Do bladders-the-size-of-walnuts run in the family?" I pondered.
	"What the hell is that on your finger?" Mary asked, ignoring me.
	"It's a Sailor Moon ring. I got it for a buck." As if the cheapness of it excused anything.
	Mary looked disgusted.
	"Look, have you ever even seen the show?" I appealed, hiding my hand under the table. 
"It's about Girl Power. She's a bit whiny, sure, but who wants another grim hero?"
	"We should go." Mary looked at her watch.
	"They almost always beat the monsters without any help from Tuxedo Mask, the boy -- 
they're *scary* monsters, too. They have to overcome their fears and anxieties  . . ."
	Mary got up and put on her jacket. "The sexy little kilts are key in stopping the 
monsters, I suppose."
	"All school girls look like that in Japan!"
	She smiled and said sweetly, "I prefer girl heroes based on the Amazonian model -- 
women who would cut off a breast so they could draw a bow faster."
	"Ahh!" I said. Nothing else came to mind. We paid and left. Mary pointed at the 
streetcar coming to a halt. I nodded and she ran off.
	"Bring me the head of Sailor Moon!" she called out, and disappeared into the streetcar.
	
	I was walking to the grocery store when I saw her coming towards me, her eyes floaty.
	"Hey Cassandra," I said, a little too loudly. 
	She looked around and settled on my face. "Hello." Her smile was slow to come, but 
steady, and I stopped. She stopped too, and we half turned to face each other.
	"On your way to work?" I inquired, unable to pull anything meaningful from the brain-
hive.
	She nodded, still smiling. She smoothed some of her curly hair behind an ear.
	"Huh," I said. Pause. "You working this weekend?"
	"Nope. I get every third weekend off."
	"You feel like going dancing?" I wanted to dance a little, as a sample, but my body was 
locked.
	"Um . . . OK." Her eyes watched mine with a disconcerting calmness.
	I broke our eye contact, looking for the off-camera cue cards that would feed me my 
next line. "Friday?" I eventually improvised.
	She started to walk away. "OK. Meet me at work. I get off at nine."
	I nodded, realized she couldn't see me, and called out "Sure." She had turned her head 
in the pause between nodding and speaking, and then turned it back.
	Something in that movement, beyond the way it sprayed her curls, was beautiful. 
Otherwise I might have interpreted her few words and abrupt departure as indifference. A song 
I had heard earlier that day rose in mental volume, its wonderful cheesy stupidity. 
	I bought my vegetables with vigour that day.
	** 
*	What the hell was I thinking?* I thought as I held the spaceship door open for 
Cassandra. I entered behind her, 
	with as much enthusiasm as I would have if there had been an anal probe waiting for 
me.
	The creative minds behind the Mothership club hadn't gone *that* far to recreate the 
ET experience, however. I caught a glimpse of whipping lights beyond the silvery-walled foyer 
we were in. I checked my coat and Cassandra did the same, and I got to see for the first time 
what she wore outside of work. From the top: hair corralled in a scrunch, scant make-up, a T-
shirt that said "Fuckf*ce" and sweat pants of undesignated brandage. And her everyday flat 
sneakers, which pleased me. I considered high heels a small step away from Chinese foot 
bondage.
	"Shall we?" Cassandra said, nodding at the door. My brain, right then beating itself for 
not asking her to a movie instead, was suddenly anaesthetized by her cool, and I followed her 
into the club.
	People had heard the call of the alien, apparently. The place was octagon-shaped, with 
a huge saucer as the roof. In the centre of it was the distended control booth from which the DJ 
presided. Along the sides were the bar and large, pill-shaped capsules.
	"I suddenly remember that the guy who recommended this place is a huge *X-Files* 
fan," I yelled to Cassandra over the bass. She laughed, and we moved deeper.
	Moving through a dance floor thick with people requires a certain finesse. A dance-
walk is required, since a normal-walk breaks the collective behaviour, and this is rude. It helps if 
a girl leads, because she can blaze a trail without sparking aggression.
	When she reached a certain density of dancers, we gently asserted our space and 
started to get funky. It was a fuzzy techno beat, and it had a few grooves to choose from. I 
picked the one in the middle and jumped in.
	I looked around. She had led us to a good spot -- like being surrounded by trees in a 
forest, it was nice to be surrounded by dancers. When you couldn't see the bored sideliners, 
taking petulant pulls at their beers, you could almost believe the whole place -- nay, the whole 
world -- was kickin' up its heels.
	I admit to a love of dancing. It is one of the few communal activities I indulge in. Despite 
the grim looks of many of my fellow dancers, I usually smile, and was smiling when I looked 
over at Cassandra.
	Luckily she was a smiler too. 
	I had thought she would be. I remembered the smile she wore when she walked alone. I 
tried not to stare at her, and not stare anywhere else in particular. Even if I was staring at a spot 
that she couldn't see, she might think I was checking someone else out. It was a complicated 
business.
	The guy next to me felt he needed a little more room than he was getting, his stubbly 
head bopping angrily. Since I had space to one side, I let him have it, though it irked me to do 
so. A little while later, my hostility danced away, Cassandra pointed to one of the pill booths. I 
nodded, and we dance-walked off.
	In one, two guys were tentatively kissing as two girls watched and giggled. In the next, 
four guys were yelling at each other, but stopped to stare at Cassandra's chest. At another, we 
slipped in as two people slipped out.
	It was warm and silvery inside the booth and smelled of metal.
	"Why do people wear those alien shirts to this place?" she asked, nodding to the half 
dozen or so within sight. "It's like wearing a Dracula shirt to a goth bar. It's just overstating the 
obvious."
	"I agree. But I don't really know why it's annoying."
	"By being so obvious about it, they make the whole thing seem like a fan club. Then 
everybody here, by association, is a fanboy-or-girl." She paused. "And of course, all of them in 
their Kindergarten Ts."
	"Is that what they're called? I never knew." I had, of course, noticed the phenomenon. 
It was as if every gal's favourite T-shirt had shrunk in the wash, but they wore them anyway. 
	"Uh huh. I have a friend who loves it, though. 'I have breasts! I have breasts! And the 
world finally knows it!' I, on the other hand, always wanted them to be detachable."
	I smiled politely and didn't move my eyes from her face. "Did you know that the 
Amazon women cut off a breast so that they could draw their bows more easily?" I said, 
thinking that moving from her specific breasts to breasts-through-the-ages would make me less 
anxious.
	She winced. "That's a little too mutilatey. Maybe not detach, then -- deflate."
	I had an image of myself blowing into her nipple and saw "blow-up dolls" looming on 
the conversational horizon. Not the ideal get-to-know-you discussion.
	"So why did you stop touring with Fuck You, Mr. Man?" I said.
	"Because breast-feeding on tour is a bitch."
	I considered possible meanings for this. Childish band members needing constant 
support, perhaps?
	"I wasn't prepared to truck around the southern states in the summer with a baby."
	My mind scrambled for a nonplussed response, and came up empty.
	"And I had had it with most of the band, anyway. Linda -- the singer -- had treated me 
as a gender traitor ever since I decided to have the kid. Erin was cool, though. The drummer. I 
made her the godmother. Maude ignored the whole thing and got drunk a lot."
	"So you just decided to stay here? Did you even know anyone in Toronto?" Some guy 
lifted the sound-dampening curtain as I said it and I had to repeat myself.
	"Nope. Which was how I liked it. Not that I was ashamed of having Jess," she said, 
looking at me sharply. "It was -- well, I was having problems."
	She wasn't looking at me now. She was looking out at the crowd, or rather at the 
shapes through the plasti-window. Then her brow furrowed, and her jaw set, and she told me. 
"I thought I was going crazy, and I was planning to check into a mental institution."
	"Really?"
	"Yeah. But I settled down once they got a new bass player and left for Montreal. I 
crashed in this punk house for a few days and then found the Sok job. I lucked out with a really 
cool landlord, too. I gotta get a drink, my throat's getting sore. Want a beer or a cola or 
something?"
	"A beer, a beer would be nice."
	"It'll give you time to process all that," she said, slipping out of the silver pill.
	*Yikes* , a part of my brain said, *I've got a crush on a crazy punk rock girl with a 
kid. Wow,* another part said,* the stories she must have!* 
	The place had gotten even busier in the meantime, and my empty opposite seat got me 
plenty of nasty looks from pill-seekers. I wished Cassandra had left a bag or a coat to prove 
that I wasn't a total hog. While waiting, I thought about what she had told me, and remembered 
something I'd heard that rang true: a person who takes you into her confidence expects an equal 
confidence in return. Not as an exchange, really, more like a smile prompting a smile.
	I had only one secret, and it was a whopper. 
	In fact, I rationalized, it was much more extreme than what Cassandra had told me. I 
had no real justification for telling her. I felt relief and disappointment in equal amounts, and my 
heart slowed to its regular speed.
	"Here ya go. Hope this is OK." She had a tumbler of clear bubbly stuff, and put the 
bottle in my hand.
	"Sure is," I said as I handed her some money. She reseated herself and played with the 
lemon on her cup rim. I took a cold slug of beer. "I hope that's not tonic water."
	"Nope. Ginger ale."
	"As long as it's not tonic water."
	A little silence, offering her the chance to choose some other line of chat. She sat there, 
a small smile on her lips, bouncing her head to the muted spaceship throb.
	"So why'd you think you were nuts?" I said.
	"It's a real step for me, you know," she said, somewhat to herself, "to be able to 
discuss that period. To *integrate * it into my life's history." I wanted to smile encouragingly but 
I was afraid to. Then she seemed to remember my question. "Why did I think I was nuts . . . 
well. I remember the moment of conception, the moment that led to me having Jess. I was 
impregnated by something inhuman. Something not from Earth."
	I did not excuse myself and run for the hills, I am proud to say.
	"I know how it sounds. Believe me, I *know* . It sounds like a joke. Knocked up by 
an alien. Getting it on with the missing link. *Really* Close Encounters." Her eyes showed a 
sign of weariness. "I didn't see the humour of it back then. I was barely keeping it together 
when we got to Toronto -- I was visibly preggers and people kept asking who the father was. 
Fuck, people were fucking obsessed with it! All these radical feminists asking the same question 
that had been asked for *centuries* . Who cares who the father was?"
	I nodded. I could see her point.
	"And every time I would trot out a lie about some guy after a show, some stranger, and 
people were a bit disturbed by this. But fuck it, I did sleep around quite a lot on tour, it helped 
keep the edge off the boredom. And it could have been one of them, but the thing was, it 
wasn't. It was this luminous *creature* , this -- anyway, every time someone asked me about 
the father I came closer to cracking."
	The pauses between swallows of my beer were getting shorter and shorter. 
	"And it seemed like every city had a friend or two who felt they had a right to know all 
about it. So Toronto was the last straw. I knew that Linda had a Toronto friend of hers in mind 
to replace me, so I just played the show on autopilot, said goodbye to Erin and scrammed."
	She stopped, shook the ice cubes in her glass and smiled at me. "Probably a bit more 
than you expected, eh?"
	I shook my head. "I just feel like such a kid."
	"How old are you?"
	"Twenty-two."
	"So am I."
	"Really."
	"Yep." 
	"So after that, it was OK?"
	"Nope, that's when the trouble started." 
	I waited.
	"I had been keeping numb on movement and people, as well as the usual drugs, while 
on tour. When I stayed at Jason's, he was usually at work, so my paranoid fantasies had full 
control as soon as morning sickness had finished with me. Jason's roommate was this total 
prick, too. He wasn't really a friend of Jason's, just a guy who had answered an ad."
	Unlike everyone else in the city I didn't have any bad roommate stories, so I waited for 
her to get back to the main story.
	"I was sure that the father was going to come back for his kid. Or it was going to kill me 
on the way out, that it was going to be a green lizard type of thing. You seen V?" She crunched 
an ice cube up and swallowed. "But nope. Nothing happened. And then I had to take care of 
Jess, which was the best distraction that I could ask for."
	"Any . . . alien characteristics?" I probed.
	Cassandra looked at me hard, searching my face for an indication of mockery. I actually 
froze as she did this, feeling like a single move could trip her emotion detector. 
	"She's an odd kid, but then again, I raised her."
	I nodded. "Did it -- he -- look like that?" I tapped the table, which had a pattern of 
white alien heads on it. A friend of mine -- the *X-Files* friend, in fact -- maintained that the 
similarity in the alien head description proved that they existed. I couldn't have cared less, but 
that was then.
	She shrugged. "A little. Like a really crude stick-person drawing looks human." She 
smiled, and I relaxed a little. "The eyes were less buggy."
	Her choice of words reminded me of my conversational obligation. She had told me 
something significant about herself -- it might not have been *verifiable* , but still gave me a 
privileged view into her life. I had to return the favour.
	I drained the final dribble from the bottle and set it aside. I told her what I had never 
told another living soul. Something I had only uttered aloud locked up in the bathroom, and even 
then with the worry that the forbidden words would rend the air.
	How to say it? Transform? Transmogrify? They all sounded like words from a science 
fiction story.
	"I can turn into a fly."
	
	"Ready? You don't have to go if you're not into it."
	Jack was standing at my door, his eyebrows high.
	I closed the book I was reading and pulled myself off my bed. "But I *am* into it, 
Jack-o." I started putting on my shoes.
	"What's with this?" he said, pointing to my shrine. On the wall, above the bloody smear 
left by the insect's passing, was a sign that read *Phil Lee: Bugkilla* . Below it was taped a 
piece of a photo that caught Phil in a rare moment of hilarity. I had cut it from a picture of our 
housewarming party.
	"Mr. Zen was reading in here," I said, "when he took it upon himself to send one of the 
wingèd folk to the next plane." I pulled on my jacket.
	"A single fly made this splatter?"
	"Yep." I stood at the door, motioning him out.
	He went. "We have to go to Who's Emma's first, all right?"
	"Where?" I said, locking the door.
	"The punk store. Where the reading's being held." We headed downstairs, pausing at 
Phil's room. In the hushed tones of the bomb defuser, Jack said, "Phil, don't look now but 
there's a *fly* on your wall."
	Without looking up from his book Phil's hand shot out and smacked the wall and the 
imaginary fly. Jack gave him a thumbs-up and we left the house.
	"I'm glad to finally see the vicious side of Phil," Jack said.
	I skipped down the steps with small hops. I always liked how the frosted wood 
squeaked, and waited, with a perverse anticipation, for the day it'd crack under my weight. 
Jack checked the mailbox, looking through some white, bill-like envelopes and putting them 
back. "No one loves us."
	We started walking through the bright sun and slush. "I have to get new shoes," I told 
Jack. "Shit. They're soaked already," I said cheerfully. I was in an impenetrably good mood, 
and it was because of the brisk air and the night before with Cassandra and marching along with 
Jack-o.
	Jack took a small and crunchy apple out of his pocket and handed it to me, removing 
another for himself. 
	"Oooo. Thankee."
	We turned onto College St. and decided to walk it rather than hop the streetcar. We 
passed by this middle-aged Italian guy, who stood on the sidewalk and contemplated a sign 
marking the end of the bike route. 
	When we were out of earshot, Jack said, "Did you see that guy? I want to be that guy. 
Just standing around in my lounge suit, thinking about stuff. Taking a whole morning to walk 
around the block." Jack shot a look back.
	"I've seen that guy before, too," I said. "When I was waiting for a streetcar, I saw him 
trying to use his toe to pop a juice cap up in the air. He was at it for about ten minutes. I 
assumed he was going to get on with the rest of us, but he just stood there, juice cap in hand, 
other hand in his pocket. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and all I could think was 'Why isn't 
this guy at his job?' What do you figure he does?"
	Jack shrugged. "It isn't rare that someone is off work, really. What's weird is that he 
can get into that mindstate at all. Standing there, alone but in public, totally self-absorbed while 
everyone else is rushing around him, even people that don't need to. People like me rushing to 
socialize, or return a book to the library."
	Jack was on Unemployment Insurance, and was using it as a kind of Alternative Arts 
Grant to further the state of Canadian poetry.
	"How is your writing going?"
	"I got a few good hours in this morning. I think I may have a decent handful by the 
summer."
	"Huh!" I said. I didn't understand Jack's dedication, but I admired it as I admired 
people who made things from scratch, be it swords or cakes. 
	"I wanna write poems that pop juice caps up in the air, poems that confuse people like 
me and you," Jack said. "Here it is." He pointed towards a small storefront with a wooden sign 
that asked blankly, "Who's Emma." The sign also had two silhouettes of dancing women in long 
flowing gowns, which looked a little like an ink blot test. There were a few smokers sitting 
outside at a picnic table. One of these, wearing an overcoat that made him look like a Russian 
revolutionary, greeted Jack.
	Jack waved back and we went in. The place was postage-stamp-sized, with shelves 
everywhere. There were a couple of student-looking kids flipping through the CDs, and 
someone sitting on a stool reading a book. I tried to get a look at the title but he sort of angled it 
away when he saw me staring.
	Jack pointed out a guy with a blue tuft of hair who was working behind the counter. It 
was Ken's friend, the guy we saw after the bug talk. "That's Mark, but he looks pretty busy 
now . . ." he said, loud enough for Mark to hear. He nodded briefly, his tuft bobbing, and went 
back to writing a receipt. 
	"So the thing is that this store has no bosses or paid employees -- it's totally volunteer 
run and organized," Jack informed me. I nodded and started flipping through the seven-inches, 
amazed at how much punk rock still came out on the small vinyl format.
	"I was at the last meeting, and all the decisions get made by consensus. Everyone has to 
agree." Jack was stressing the point and I glanced at him to fake that I was listening. I went 
back to the stacks and found what I was looking for: a Fuck You, Mr. Man record.
	The cover was a cartoon drawing of a highly pierced punk girl swigging from a Molotov 
cocktail and levelling a shotgun at a cop. The back had the song titles and the credits listed 
(Bass = Cass).
	"Hey Jack, got 'em right here," Mark said, his customer walking towards the door. He 
pulled out a stack of lime-green posters and showed one to Jack.
	"This looks really good," Jack said, a small smile spreading on his face. I looked over 
his shoulder and shook my head.
	"This won't do." I looked Mark in the eye. "I'm Jack's agent. You'll have to increase 
the size of my client's name approximately 300 per cent. We're also pushing for a name change 
-- something like 'Jack's Night.'" I nodded and looked at Mark, who was also nodding.
	"How about: 'You Don't Know Jack,'" he suggested.
	I smiled. "Riiiight. That's the stuff."
	"All right, why don't you wait downstairs in our Negotiation Room. I'll send my 
Negotiation Experts down with their Negotiation Implements and we'll see if we can't smooth 
out the small bumps in this agreement."
	"Sounds *great* ," I said, my face plastered with a shit-eating grin.
	"Jesus," Jack said, wheezing. "Too much sarcasm in the air. Not enough real oxygen."
	Mark smiled and handed him a chunk of flyers. "Think you can handle this many?" Jack 
nodded, and Mark pulled a bucket from behind the counter and a can of condensed milk, which 
he opened and poured into the bucket.
	As it emptied, Jack asked, "Did you do this at work?"
	"Yep." He pointed to a tagline at the bottom of the flyer that read *Unintentionally 
Sponsored by Pinko's Copies.* 
	The music, pop punk with boyish vocals, became comprehensible: 
	I am just a humble man 
	who you could do much better than
	still I ask respectfully 
	will you waste your life with me?
	I imagined saying that to Cassandra, and my heart adrenaline-pumped.
	Jack picked up the milk bucket and turned to me. "Hold on a sec, let me get this first," I 
said, laying out some cash for the record.
	"An oldie but a goodie," said Mark, calculating the price. "You know that the bass 
player lives around here, now?"
	"Yeah, Cassandra," I said.
	"She comes out to our monthly meetings now and then, just to leave us star-struck," 
Mark said. "You guys are very welcome too, even if you're not stars. Our next one is February 
second, the potluck starts at six."
	We nodded and I grabbed the stack of flyers, Jack a staplegun and staples.
	"Godspeed," Mark said as we pushed through the door.
	" . . . a huge cop came up to me and said, 'I *saw* you down at the Stock Exchange, 
and I'm keeping an *eye* on you,'" the guy in the overcoat was saying as we passed the picnic 
table. A short black girl and a guy with hippie hair listened, amused.
	We stopped at a pole and staplegunned a flyer to it, the third and fourth corner needing 
multiple staples before it took. "Mark's a nice guy," said Jack. "He's going out with Val."
	"Yeah, I think I saw him once before. With Ken. I would have introduced myself, but 
he didn't seem that interested."
	Jack shook his head and smiled quietly.
	"And Val does a poetry zine?" I said.
	"Yeah," he said, carefully brushing some milk on a cement pole. I positioned it and 
smoothed it down. We stood back and looked at it. A corner drooped and Jack slapped some 
more milk on it until it stuck.
	"The Val you like?" I prodded, pretty sure of the answer.
	"Yeah," he said, brushing the next pole with less energy.
	We passed a market stall with all kinds of nuts in partitioned boxes. "I'd live right here if 
I was a bird," I said, nodding at an open-air display that resembled a smooth multicoloured 
patchwork. "Free food." A sign depicted a big-bottomed female peanut sassing an admiring 
pistachio with a Jamaican accent.
	"How did it go with you and that waitress?" Jack said.
	Four quick snaps and the flyer was up, covering up a show flyer for last weekend. 
"Really good. We went to that alien club, the Mothership, the one that used to be Fat City on 
Queen West?"
	Jack smiled and shook his head no. "You forget how uncool I am." He milked the side 
of a *Toronto Sun* box and I flyered it.
	"Anyway, I was really worried I had done the wrong thing, bringing her there. But then 
we danced and it was fun . . . she was a great dancer, she smiled and moved --"
	Jack nodded and glowed pleasure. "Ah."
	"Then we sat down and talked in this little booth thing, it was like a pod from some 
seventies British sci-fi show -- I kept expecting it to blip into a time corridor or shoot out into 
the stratosphere. And she told me a secret and I told her one and, *wow,* it was great." I had 
been waiting all morning to tell someone, to make it more real by speaking it.
	"You've got a secret?" said Jack. We were out of the market and on a main 
thoroughfare; a streetcar clanged as if to celebrate that fact.
	"Yeah. It's a pretty good one, actually. But as you know, it's part of the courting ritual 
to take one another into each other's confidence."
	"And you find it *helps* the courting process to reveal your impotence?" Jack said, 
pausing to milk up a section of a bank's wall.
	I laughed, too hard. "What? *That's * not my secret," I said. After a beat: "*Everyone* 
knows about that!" A bank employee passed by as I was placing the poster, and didn't even 
look us over. "Is this legal?"
	Jack shrugged. "They all get torn down over a day or two. Overzealous city 
employees."
	"A *day* or two?" I said, discouraged. "I thought it was more like a week or two."
	"Don't think about it. At least we didn't have to pay for the copies. A pile like this, 
coloured, would cost $20 at a cheap place. Luckily Mark works for the Man."
	We switched implements, and I hooked the bucket on my wrist. I took a good look at 
the flyer. There was a nicely reproduced picture of a girl with glasses saying something irate to a 
crowd -- a previous reading, I presumed:
	FUCK LOVE
	February 14
	Come out for the harshest of bitter love poetry, featuring Valerie, Jack, Ken and YOU! 
Bring in your hate-filled screeds and join us in kicking cupid into a bloody, unrecognizable 
pulp. 
	@ Who's Emma, an anti-love community space.
	I had to smile, thinking that this Valentine's Day might, for the first time ever, come 
something close to its hype. For me, anyway. I brushed the next pole, using way too much milk 
in my excitement. "Flyer me," I said.
	"Sure," Jack said, and paused. "But first, tell me what your secret is."
	"Nope."
	"Then I'm afraid I won't be able to help you out with your flyer problem. No secret-
telling, no flyer-pasting."
	"They're your damn flyers," I said mildly.
	
	I sat down at the counter and watched her small-talk with a college, footballylike guy. 
She gave him change and he gave her a dazzling smile.
	She walked back to the counter and noticed me in a double-take fashion, a smile 
growing. "Hey ya, Flyboy," she said with a happy rather than a teasing smile.
	"Hey, Alien Girl," I said, even if it didn't make sense. She was like an alien in my world, 
an advanced species with lore and science to bestow.
	"Be back in a flash," she said, tossing her apron under the counter and walking to the 
back. It was so strange to be here to meet Cassandra instead of just to pathetically admire her.
	I looked around the place. It was pretty busy, but the other waitress seemed to have it 
under control. She walked from one table to the other as if they were lifeboats, tending to their 
needs in a brusque but comprehensive way.
	When I looked back I noticed the stare of the cook, who dropped the basket of icy 
fries into the oil with an ominous *tssshh* . I gave him a tight-lipped smile and a nod and tapped 
my hands on the counter to fake a jaunty unconcern.
	I wondered what was behind those eyes. I wondered if he had feelings for Cassandra. I 
experienced a moment of empathic vertigo as I imagined myself as the Boyfriend -- that sinister, 
alpha male archetype I had pitted myself against in a dozen futile battles. The cook stepped 
away from the grill and wiped his hands but said nothing.
	Cassandra walked out in her plainclothes and waved to the cook, who said goodbye in 
a neutral way. We passed through a cluster of people who were reading the menu beside the 
door and headed for the gallery.
	"So she said that there's gonna be food there," Cassandra mentioned as we walked. 
The street was crowded, and it might have been just another late rush hour in Toronto but for 
the lighting. The sunset and precipitate caused an orange cast that was joyously apocalyptic. 
Times like this I felt that watching the world end might be fun. 
	I noticed a lime-green flyer for the reading, and realized we were in the area that Jack 
and I had postered. I was about to mention it but she spoke first, and then I forgot about it 
entirely.
	"I love this crazy light. I get off most nights at six, so I can tell when the seasons are 
changing by the amount of light I have on the way home," Cassandra said. "I like it when the 
sun's setting now, because it feels right to have it mark the end of my working day. When 
there's too much light, it makes me feel like I should do something -- when it's pitch black it 
makes me feel like I've been working my life away."
	"It looks like this every night at this time?" I said, shocked. Where had I been?
	"Well, not this weird. But check out this corner," she said, stopping me. "The sun's 
dropped behind the buildings, but you can still see it in the reflection of that building." She 
pointed, and I winced. After the burn in my eyes faded, I looked around. Everyone was walking 
around in this unearthly light like they didn't even notice it. I wondered if it was like this in 
Alaska, with the twenty-four-hour days.
	"Reminds me of the Northwest Territories," said Cassandra. 
	"I was just thinking about that!" I said. "Have you been there?"
	"Yeah, we moved there from Winnipeg when I was six. Don't remember too much 
about it. We were only there two years before we moved to Vancouver."
	I had made one move, from London to Toronto. I decided not to mention that, and 
asked her about the Territories.
	"We lived in a city, so it was pretty much the same. The weather was different, and 
there were more Native people . . . there it is," pointing to a storefront. There was a sign that 
read "The Sparrow Collective presents *Nests* ." The window display was empty except for a 
tiny nest with an egg inside. As I watched, it jerked, and jerked again. I pointed it out to 
Cassandra.
	We went into the gallery. "First priority: find the food," Cassandra said without moving 
her lips. "Southwest corner, forty feet from present position."
	"Move, move, move."
	The room was uncrowded, and it looked like we were going to make it.
	"Cassandra," came from behind us -- the whistle of an incoming shell.
	"Go on without me," Cassandra muttered. "I'll try to meet you there. When it's safe." 
She turned around, and I continued my tense saunter towards the food. But I figured I was OK 
-- I didn't know anyone in the art world. So I stopped to look at one of the pieces, a feather 
nest with a brambly, woody robin as its occupant. It was a cocky move, and I relished it, 
stroking my chin as I surveyed it from a few different angles. I could clearly see pastries, *puff* 
pastries on the table, and different varieties of natural juices.
	I turned to make the last few steps.
	"Ryan!" At first I thought it was my imagination, and I kept moving. But a hand was 
quickly approaching, and there was no escape. "Ryan, how you doing?" the bearded, crazy-
eyed man asked me as his beefy hand pumped mine.
	"Just fine!" I said, wondering if enthusing over my fineness would convince this stranger 
I had a clue as to who he was. Out of focus, and out of reach, was the table, a veritable 
groaning board of unattainable delights.
	"I had heard you had made the move, and I kept expecting to run into you."
	I adjusted my glasses, once again wishing they had a minicomputer built in. *SUBJECT 
IDENTIFIED: Brian Wong* , would run across my field of vision in glowing green, perhaps 
supplemented with a variety of other data (marital status, job, weapon of choice, favourite 
cocktail) that I could weave into conversation.
	"It's a pretty big city," I mumbled.
	"You know, I don't think I've seen you since my last show. The one on bomb shelters, 
you remember that?"
	Suddenly, miraculously, I did -- this was a friend of mine from London, a high-school 
buddy. Steve. And his bomb shelter show *was* quite memorable.
	"How could I forget! The pounding explosions, the fury of the art teacher . . . the 
sausage rolls shaped like A-bombs . . ." I said, looking lingeringly over at the table.
	"Yeah, those were angry days," Steve said. "And Katie outdid herself with the food this 
time -- wait till you try the scotch eggs." I had a one-second window to jump on that offer, and 
missed it. "But I'd like to get your feedback. I still remember your critique of the last show, and 
it really helped me."
	He led me away from the table and towards his piece. My dismay was lessened by the 
compliment. "You seem to be focused on habitats, in one form or another," I started, warming 
to the subject.
	I saw Cassandra arrive at the table, having managed to avoid engagement with anyone. 
She shot me a smile, and I was happy one of us made it, at least.
	
	I had the television on mute. Sailor Mercury blasted bubbles at the plant thing 
soundlessly but effectively.
	I was on the phone to my sister. "So she's really cool. She used to be in a punk band, 
and she's waitressing now," I said, leaving the alien baby part out. Lisa's a little excitable.
	"So when do we get to meet her?" she said, in a goofy voice.
	I forked some lettuce into my mouth. "Right after hell freezes over," I said calmly. "But 
maybe not that soon." I took a second to appreciate the hundreds of kilometres that separated 
me from my family.
	"Well, it's a good thing you met someone," she said. "We were beginning to wonder 
about those Toronto women."
	I hadn't had any relationship news to relate since I had moved out here. A coffee date 
or two, but nothing to call home about. My sister usually took up the slack by talking about the 
guys in her life, who traditionally started off as paragons of humanity and quickly devolved to 
sleaze. No one measured up to Dad.
	An ugly thought ambled through my mind:* If Mom died, would Dad start dating?* It 
suddenly started a slideshow of Dad at the beach with a bimbo, Dad dancing in a shiny hipster 
shirt, Dad running through the snow and laughing with some other woman.
	"Is Dad drinking?" I said in an effort to derail the horrible train of thought that would 
end with Dad doing the nasty.
	It must have sounded sudden, because Lisa paused before she answered. "Well, he 
was, at the beginning. But he's slowed down now. Still a lot, more than before, but not super-
serious."
	"Huh." I didn't want to ask how Mom was, and nothing else was important, so there 
was a pause. Sailor Moon was eating some cake in exaggerated cartoon fashion and her talking 
cat, Luna, looked on disapprovingly.
	"Huh," Lisa said back. "Well, I'll tell them you called."
	There was a knock on the door. "Come," I said, in my best Picard voice. "Yeah, get 
them to give me a call when they have a chance." Phil came in, and sat down in front of the TV.
	"OK, give Cassandra a kiss for me."
	"Yeah, whatever," I said, a grin crawling over my face, enjoying and mortified by my 
sister's lameness. "Later."
	"Byye."
	I hung up and Phil looked back at me with his dark eyes. "Turn it up, turn it up." I 
unmuted it. Phil looked back. "Did you know that one of the biggest audiences for this show in 
Japan are males aged eighteen to twenty-four?"
	"Really?" I said through a mouthful of raw cauliflower. That was disappointing -- I had 
relished the idea that I was evading my demographic destiny. The ads for toys between 
cartoons were amusingly ineffective, although I must admit I had bought more than one Nerf 
product in the last two months.
	"They cut out all the ass shots for the North American audience, of course, and the gay 
subtexts. That's why the shows are short enough for the 'Sailor Says' do-goodie bit at the end, 
which also satisfies the educational content laws."
	"Why do you think I have to eat, watch TV and talk on the phone at the same time?" I 
suddenly mused. "Why do I require three different simultaneous stimuli?"
	"Your vacuous western culture has necessitated the endless chatter of the monkey mind. 
All white folk are thrall to it," Phil said conversationally. He wiped a bit of dust off the screen.
	"As you are in thrall to Sailor Moon, it seems."
	"But as you see, I am focused on this single stimulus, getting as close as I can without 
suffering radiation burns." And it was true. His big head was entirely blocking the screen.
	"While carrying on a conversation with me."
	"True," he conceded. "As well as wearing a cock ring."
	"Can you never, never, *never* say that again," I said, carrot in hand.
	Phil shrugged and smiled. "Okily-dokily."
	I chewed on my carrot and asked, "Is it the one you bought at that vending machine? 
Promising *Pure Animal Pleasure?"* 
	"Nope. I lost that in Melissa's car." Phil and Melissa went out. "Packaging and all."
	*"What?"* 
	"Then she gave the car to her dad . . . he cleaned it out before it was sold."
	Melissa's dad didn't approve of Phil. It was hard to imagine what he would do when 
faced with this nefarious toy. I would have made a joke -- it was a topic with veritable joke 
landmines -- but my empathic response to the drama and the horror left me utterly speechless.
	*Sailor Moon* was done. Phil started flipping through channels. "I don't know for sure. 
I may have lost it in my room at my mom's place, but that's almost as bad."
	It couldn't be as bad as the scene that was forming in my mind -- a fat, tired, mostly 
faceless old Italian man dustbusting the upholstery on his hands and knees and coming across 
the poorly printed but utterly explicit pink packaging. Picking it up in his sausage fingers, 
squinting at it, flinging it out of the car with a squeak. Trying to continue cleaning the car, but 
with haunted eyes, looking up and beseeching his god once in a while. For me, this scene was 
real.
	"Who knew the chaos you were unleashing with the turn of a vending machine knob?" I 
said. "It was as if it was attached to some huge machinery of fate."
	Phil snorted.
	"Why did you --" *buy it anyway* died on my lips as I remembered why.
	"Some *idiot* kept saying I should buy it. That since it was made in Korea it was my 
national duty. 'People in the marital aids industry have to eat,' the idiot said."
	"Shouldn't listen to those idiots," I mumbled.
	Phil looked back at me with silent eyes. He looked back at the TV. "Nothing 
happened, anyway. It was a few weeks ago."
	I didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
	
	I was passing by Miracle Wash one day and looked in to see if it was dirtier than it was 
clean. Someone with Cassandra's hair was doing her laundry. I chastized myself for turning 
everyone into Cass, but then she turned around and waved.
	"Hey, cutes," she said, opening the dryer door. "I'm sorry I had to leave the gallery so 
suddenly."
	I sat down on the bench. "Well, you had already eaten your fill, so why not?" I 
attempted an unhappy look that probably failed to conceal my pleasure at (a) being called 
*cutes* and (b) the beauty of the chance encounter. Miracle Wash, indeed.
	"Tell me you got one of the huge pastries." She flopped the laundry on the counter and 
used her hand to show me just how big they were. "With the raspberry filling?" Her eyes were 
rapture.
	"I got one cracker," I said. "One *dry * cracker. No juice or beer was left by the time I 
got there."
	She sat down beside me, waving a fly away from her clothes. "I never kill them after 
what you told me. When are you going to prove it to me, anyway?"
	I shrugged nonchalantly, but my heart speeded up. "Whenever you like."
	"I mean, I'd prove what I told you, but I can't. But you can actually do it in front of me, 
right?"
	"More or less," I said. "What are you doing tonight?" 
	She was caught off guard. "Tonight? Well, actually, me and Jess -- my kid -- hang out 
on Sunday nights. Watch TV." She scratched her head. "Unless you'd . . . like to meet her."
	"Well, if I wouldn't be intruding . . ." I said.
	"Nope. We just watch a couple of hours of *Sailor Moon* episodes. She likes to 
watch them with me. Do you know the show?"
	I showed her my Sailor Scout ring, wordlessly. She smiled and shook her head, and 
went back to folding her laundry.
	In my mind, I continued the conversation:
	*"What do you watch kids' shows for?" she might say, sometime.* 
*	"It's not any more stupid than any other TV. I like the idea of girls watching this and 
imagining they're various characters. Getting inspired. Reminds me of watching * G-Force* 
when I was a kid."* 
*	* Weak. I tried something else.
	*"Sailor Moon is such a whiny little brat," Cassandra could say.* 
*	"She is, but don't you think that's better than having a stoic heroine whose only 
difference from a clichéd, stereotypical male hero is her gender?"* 
*	* Jesus, that sounded stilted and pedantic.
	*"Isn't it interesting how their little outfits so perfectly display tits and ass?"* 
*	"But there's ribbons and stuff to conceal the contours, except during the transformation 
scenes!"* I'd say desperately to Imaginary Cassandra, who had taken on the tone and virulence 
of Mary. *She wouldn't let her kid watch it if she hated it that much,* I told myself, trying not to 
let my nervousness show on my face.
	Cassandra held up a tiny T-shirt. It had a faded print of the blonde schoolgirl in 
question, hands on hips. "She loves this thing."
	She went on to untangle some unmentionables, so I had to focus. "Yeah, it looks like 
it's been through a few battles."
	"Yeah. Her cousin gave it to her. As well as all the tapes of the show. Man, kids go off 
things fast," she said, shaking her head. She started packing her laundry into a well-worn 
backpack. "And it's so intense -- one second they're watching it three times a day and the next 
they could care less."
	"It was on three times a day?" I said. "Jesus, I'd never get anything done."
	Cassandra laughed. "At its height. Now only oddbods and deprived children without 
cable will watch it."
	"Oh, *I'm* the oddbod, eh?"
	"Yeah," she said hitching up her backpack and giving the dryer one last look. "I'm just 
being a good mother."
	We left. Her cheeks glowed as she breathed. Suddenly, she burst out with: "I can't wait 
to see you turn into a fly!" Cassandra skipped ahead a little and looked back, eyes ablaze. I 
experienced a cold dropping in my stomach, similar to a roller-coaster feeling. I watched the 
ground as I walked over her snowprints.
	"It's not all that dramatic," I said.
	"It'll be dramatic for me," she said.
	We passed a café, and Cassandra pressed her face up against the glass and waved 
energetically. I couldn't see anything inside, what with the glare, but I had an annoying urge to 
see if it was a man or a woman she was waving at.
	It started to snow, the heavy white flakes that coated early February. "Do we want 
munchies?" Cassandra asked, pointing to a dollar store. I thought she meant for my show, but 
then I realized she meant for the video. 
	We paused for a moment outside Dollar $aver$, the excess of the store spilled 
higgledy-piggledy onto the sidewalk as if there had been a retail avalanche earlier that day. 
Cassandra went in and I followed.
	A Chinese woman with heavy make-up was alerted to our presence by a tinny 
electronic chime. Cassandra went searching for snacks, and I hung around the counter, where 
the store manager didn't have to worry about me slipping a package of smelly markers into my 
jacket. I noticed a few boxes of Sailor Moon merchandise all but crowded off the shelf by the 
kurrent kid kraze.
	I wanted to buy a ring for Cassandra. But I couldn't. It was too dramatic, too symbolic, 
too sappy. I really wanted to, but I was utterly paralyzed. Then I thought -- Jess.
	Cassandra tossed a Salt + Vinegar chip bag on the counter.
	"Does Jess wear barrettes?" I asked.
	"Nope," she said, "but she likes shiny stickers." I put a package of them on the counter.
	"I want a ring like yours," said Cassandra, a half-ashamed smile on her face.
	"You should get one," I said. "They've got all of the Scouts right here."
	"Do they have Sailor Mars?" she said. Sailor Mars was the tough one who argued with 
Sailor Moon a lot, but they were friends when it came to the crunch. I located it and put it with 
the other purchases, which I paid for. I picked it up and she wiggled her finger into it.
	"Very nice," the old Chinese woman said, as Cassandra displayed it for her with a 
glamorous flourish. So I got to buy her a ring, and we had worked together to make it a 
tolerably undramatic and still significant moment. Cassandra pulled her mittens over her hands -- 
she had these great red mittens that made her hands look like sleds -- and we went outside.
	We took all these side streets and short cuts through tiny parks and large parking lots, 
and I was watching her face as she talked so I really had no idea where she lived. I always took 
advantage of when Cassandra spoke to really look at her -- it's not staring then. Of course I 
was listening to her as well. She was talking about the differences in the neighbourhood where 
she lived in Vancouver and the one she lived in now.
	We had to walk down a back road to get to the place, and I asked, "Does it get scary 
here at night?" 
	"Not for me," Cassandra said, smiling mysteriously. She unlocked the gate and let me 
into the small yard, locking it behind her. There was a set of stairs, and at the top, Cassandra 
stopped.
	"This is a really nice place to sit in the summer," she said. I looked over the jumble of 
roofs, a willow tree in the distance, the beginning sunset. "Too fuckin' cold today, though."
	We moved inside and walked by a woman bent over a pot in the kitchen. "Hi, Olive," 
Cassandra said, and got a raised hand from the lady, who didn't turn away from her work.
	"We share that bathroom," she said as we walked by it to the stairs. There was a little 
girl standing still and quiet, who watched us.
	"Hi Jessy," said Cassandra in an unfamiliar soft voice. "Go on up," she said, lightly 
patting the child's bottom to push her on her way. The kid's small legs made every step a 
stretch, and I walked up slowly. I could see from the back of her head that Cassandra was 
smiling.
	At the top of the stairs introductions were made. "Jess, this is Ryan. He's a friend of 
mine." Jess had most of her hand in her mouth, so a handshake was out -- I gave her a friendly 
wave. She returned it, watching me with big grey eyes a little too arresting to call cute.
	Cassandra put the chips down on the counter and took off her jacket. "Well, what do 
we want to do next?" she said, looking at me.
	"thailor oon," said Jess, talking around the hand.
	We both looked at her. She took her hand out of her mouth with a *sssllp* . "Sailor 
Moon," she repeated, her eyes entreating us. 
	I dreaded having to wait any longer. "I can do it first, and then we can put on the 
video," I said. She smiled and nodded quickly. 
	"OK, Jess -- can Jess watch?" she said, almost as an afterthought. I nodded. It didn't 
matter what kids saw as long as they weren't traumatized. They couldn't convince anyone of 
something like this.
	"OK, Jess, my friend is going to try to turn into a fly." 
	"Fly?" she asked, wobbling her hand through the air.
	"That's right," I said.
	They both sat down on the couch. I stood before them, feeling like a magician, a fraud. 
Downplaying the showmanship, I said, "I'm gonna change into a fly, buzz around in a circle, and 
change back. But my clothes are gonna fall off, and so if you don't see me right away it's 
probably because I'm covered in my clothes, so just shake them gently so I can get out." 
	I looked out of the room. There was another room down the hall, and the door was 
ajar. "I can't transform back here, because I'll be buck naked."
	"What a show!" Cassandra said, wiggling her eyebrows.
	"And no one wants that," I rushed on, pleased by her enthusiasm. "After I fly around, 
I'll buzz into that room and wait for you to dump my clothes in there and close the door."
	"I think we should be able to watch the *whole* thing, so as to make sure you're not 
faking it somehow."
	I couldn't think of a clever and flirty answer so I just turned into a fly.
	I willed myself up through my head, and I saw the huge structure of my empty clothes 
crumble and flop silently. Cassandra had one hand on the couch as if she was ready to stand, 
but didn't. In the dozens of reflections of my multi-eyes, her face was blooming wonder as she 
scanned the room.
	"Holy shit," she said.
	Jess sat there, watching me, her eyes tracking me as I buzzed in slow, lazy, glorious 
circles. God, it was good to fly again! I hovered, dove and stretched my minute limbs. My 
proboscis smelled some good stuff in the garbage can, but I refrained. Not in front of an 
audience.
	Cassandra had found me and said, "That's incredible, Ryan. That's . . ."
	She got up and gathered up my clothes, and my ring fell. She laughed and picked it up, 
then deposited the pile in the other room.
	I landed sideways on the huge expanse of white, the proverbial fly on the wall, waiting 
for her to return. Now that I had stopped flying, Jess was looking at the TV longingly. 
Cassandra returned, careful to leave the door wide open, and went to sit down.
	I flew through the hall and snapped back, landing on my feet. My hair felt a little thick, 
but my skin wasn't slimy -- I had been worried about the residue, even though I was in fly form 
for less than a minute. I pulled on my pants and undies in one convenient move, then my ring, 
then my shirt, and then I headed back to the stage.
	They clapped when I entered the room. I bowed as I wiggled into my shoes. "Let's see 
Sailor Moon top that," I said, sitting down.
	
	*Someone knows. Another person knows. A human besides myself knows. Cassandra 
knows I can turn into a fly.* I was trying to concentrate on the professor, but the thought 
returned with machinelike regularity.
	My brain had been repeatedly telling me this ever since it happened. At first jubilantly, 
then just as a news update, this new reality assailed my psyche -- and I feared for its stability. It 
was as if my brain was rebuilding itself.
	The prof was writing some crap on the board. I scribbled it down, not reading it, leaving 
comprehension till after. She knew, she knew*, she knew.* 
	*Why was it such a big deal?* I thought. *Because now you could do this!* my brain 
said, showing me a clip: camera pulls back, I suddenly stand up. Clip-Me yells "Look at me, 
I'm really a fly!" And I turn into a fly, sending the class into screaming chaos. Clip ends.
	I started to shudder. There were a million variants of this clip, all bad. I wondered about 
my choice of declaration: *Look at me, I'm really a fly!* What did it mean? More specifically, 
what did telling one trusted person have to do with telling the whole world?
	I hadn't really predicted how dramatic the aftereffects would be. After showing 
Cassandra, I sat through two entire episodes of *Sailor Moon* that I had already seen, just so 
my adrenaline would wear off. I had imagined different things, different feelings to accompany 
taking this step, but this speed anxiety was not one of them. It completely overshadowed my 
excitement for Cassandra, and when she had asked for my number as I got ready to leave, my 
mind blanked.
	I stood there, feeling like a moron, but also a little scared. Up until then, I had pretended 
like the whole thing wasn't affecting me, cheering on the Sailor Scouts and eating chips with my 
regular gusto.
	"I just want to talk to you about a couple of things, why this is so exciting for me," 
Cassandra had said, flushing a little, indicating Jess as her reason for not discussing them now.
	I was completely dumb, unable to even speak. 
	"Well . . . maybe I'll just see you at Sok sometime," she said. Her hurt look was like a 
kick to the old braincase.
	"Five three five six two two two," I said, looking around for a pen.
	"You don't have to --"
	"No, please, I'd love you to call me, I'm just a total space case today."
	She had taken the number down.
	
	A few days after my unveiling, I'd calmed down a bit. I had kept away from my normal 
dose of coffee and that had helped.
	"You have . . . two new messages," the recorded voice said.
	"Hi Ryan," said Ken. "Nice message, you've got a point about those clowns. They must 
be stopped. I'm just calling to chat, so . . . call me back."
	I deleted the message and waited for the next one.
	"Hi Ryan. This is Cassandra. Give me a call. 599-3507."
	I listened to that message two more times. There might have been a faint nervousness 
about it, but nothing more. I debated over whether to keep it or erase it and decided to erase it. 
There was no point in using up space in Bell Laboratory's message bank when it was probably 
overtaxed anyway.
	Sometimes, when using the invisible answering machine service, I would have this 
irrational image of a huge reel-to-reel anachronism with flashing lights starting and stopping. It 
was among thousands of unmarked machines just like it in some subterranean vault, and if I was 
there in person looking for the one my messages were recorded on, it would be as futile as 
trying to find a particular grain of sand on the shores of the Dead Sea.
	I recorded Cassandra's number in my phone book (under C, since I didn't know her 
last name) with no real excitement. I felt bland about it, this cherished event. I was unable to 
disassociate her from the tremendous stress of having my secret no longer a secret.
	I also hadn't listened to the record of hers I had bought at Who's Emma, and I had 
been determined to before I talked to her again. I didn't have a player -- it was at home 
(London, that is), and I hadn't been in a frame of mind to remember it last time I was there.
	Already, I was recalling the whole terrible visit as a movie-of-the-week. None of it 
seemed real, none of it except for my sister's lank hair and my father's whisky breath.
	I grabbed the record and a blank tape from the top of my dresser and went downstairs. 
Jack's door was closed, and I knocked. He opened it ridiculously quickly.
	". . ." I said.
	"I was just on my way to the washroom," said Jack, explaining his pre-emptive strike.
	"Oh. Can I use your record player?"
	"Yeah -- oh, you're playing that? Wait till I get back." He left and I placed it on the 
ancient machine, upon which an ear trumpet would have been appropriate.
	Jack's room had changed little since I had last seen it. His bookshelves were his 
wallpaper. Jack collected books, a habit as expensive as any addiction. I kept *my* books at 
the public library and drank away the occasional pang of jealousy.
	I sat on his futon, a bed he compulsively folded up into a couch. I had never seen it 
folded out, actually. I looked through the tome of poetry he had set to one side, putting it down 
before he got back. I didn't want to start him up on some British aesthete.
	"Why do you fold this sucker up all the time?" I asked.
	"Because I don't have anywhere for visitors to sit. And I feel weird having them sit on 
my bed," he said, his face wrinkling. "Feels like I'm coming on to them. Next thing I'll be 
snuggling up and dragging the blanket over us."
	I blinked. "Huh. Can I tape this?" I said, waving the blank I'd brought.
	"Nope," Jack said.
	I went over to verify, and indeed there was no record button. It looked strange, like a 
four-fingered hand. "Fuck."
	"Sorry."
	"Don't 'sorry' me. I'll expect you to get up to speed pretty damn quick, Jack. Your 
consumption levels are significantly lower this quarter, anyway. You don't want a Poor Buyer 
rating on your citizenship card, do you?"
	He didn't answer, having snatched the seven-inch from my hand and removed the lyric 
sheet.
	I leaned over and gave him the hairy eyeball. "*Do* you?"
	"I guess I don't," he said. "But let's see what Fuck You, Mr. Man has to say about it."
	We played the record. It was sarcastic, short and punk rock. It was better than most 
hardcore I had heard, and the lyrics were pretty good too. There was a song about birth 
control, a song about gardens, one about the Mothers of the Disappeared in Latin America. The 
last one was sung and written by Cassandra, "Fuckdoll Comment Sheet":
	Was I a distracting enough distraction?
	Did I provide complete satisfaction?
	Did I convincingly conceal revulsion and/or rage?
	Write further suggestions on the back of the page
	I sat there for a second trying to reconcile this voice with the careful one that had been 
on my answering machine.
	"That's the woman you went out with?" asked Jack. 
	I nodded.
	"Lucky bastard." His eyes started to traverse his legacy of titles, as they eventually 
always did whenever I ventured into his *sanctum sanctorum* . "Have you read *The Female 
Eunuch* ? It's a classic feminist work."
	"The only remotely feminist thing I've read is Paglia. For that po-mo course."
	Jack grimaced. "Bleh. Apologist for male dumbness. This one's much better. Germaine 
Greer." He pulled out the book and handed it to me. The dated, seventies look of the book 
appealed to me, and I had always been a little ashamed of my sketchy knowledge of women's 
issues, so I accepted. I felt a little silly, though -- what, was I studying for a test?
	"Thanks."
	He nodded.
	"This will enable me to stalk and trap my female prey more efficiently."
	We laughed the Evil Men laugh, slapped each other on the back, and would have lit up 
cigars had we had them.
	I removed the record and headed back to my room. I passed Phil on his way out, 
wearing a loosely knit toque. He took the book from my hand and looked at it, handed it back 
without comment, and walked out.
	Back in my room, I shut the door behind me and locked it too, by habit. Then unlocked 
it -- people didn't barge in around here, so why be so anal? I guessed it was left over from 
living with my family, when Lisa was liable to treat an unlocked door as an invitation to come in, 
sprawl on my bed, and waste time that I was planning to waste alone. It was annoying then, but 
I supposed in time I'd come to miss it. I know I already missed every irritating trait of my mom, 
the cancer having changed them into quirky virtues. The way she'd constantly brush my hair, 
producing a comb from thin air, just the memory of that made my nostrils flare and eyes burn.
	I lay on my bed, trying to formulate what I could say about Cassandra's song. "Witty"? 
"Angry"? True, but calling someone's work "angry" seemed dismissive. "Vitriolic" and "raw" 
seemed better. I picked up the phone and dialled her digits.
	I checked the time. She should be home if she came straight home from -- "Hello?"
	"Hi Cassandra. It's Ryan."
	"Oh hi! How are you?"
	I decided to answer this stock question honestly. "Pretty crazy. I've really been sorta -- 
unbalanced by the whole thing. Showing you and all."
	"Really."
	"Yeah. I never expected that. My brain didn't seem to mind my telling you, but 
*showing* you was another matter. But it's getting better now. I go without thinking about it for 
hours on end."
	"You seemed so calm after it happened."
	"Yeah, I'm a pretty good pretender. But it echoed around my brain for a couple of 
days. Did it affect you at all?"
	"Yeah," she said. "In a good way. My experience with Jess's father . . . is something I 
know to be true. Unless I question my eyes and memory, which I have no reason to. But I have 
no proof. And everything else in the world, in my life, is so completely normal. But now --"
	"I'm proof. I'm your proof."
	"Yes. But more has happened since that. Like now that that problem is solved -- well, 
not that it's solved, but I no longer am questioning my sanity -- I've remembered something 
else."
	I thought of a joke, but kept my mouth shut. Thank god.
	"When I was six, my uncle tried to rape me."
	"Oh, fuck."
	"I said *tried* ." There was silence, and I heard her take a breath. "The family story has 
always been that Uncle Chuck had gambling debts and so made himself permanently scarce. 
But something weirder happened."
	"What?"
	"I don't know what. Not involving aliens, don't worry. I think I did it. I think I made 
him disappear."
	"Disappear? Like leave the city?"
	"No, like leaving everything. Like into thin air."
	I managed to stutter a single-syllable word: "How?"
	"How do you turn into a fly?" I could hear her challenging smile.
	"Uhhh . . ."
	"Exactly. But anyways, what are you doing on Saturday?"
	I glanced up at the calendar. "Valentine's Day? Nothing. Oh, there's this thing at Who's 
Emma . . ."
	"That's what I was going to ask you to."
	"Great! Yeah, I'd like that." A synapse fired. "Are you going to read something? I 
heard your song on the *Fried, not Baked* seven-inch."
	"Oh?" Her voice was surprised, but surpleased or surpissed I could not gauge on a 
single word.
	I hurtled on. "I got it at Emma's. It was vitriolic and" -- *raw* seemed too much of a 
rock critic word --  "nasty. I liked it."
	She laughed. "Actually, Val and Mark wanted me to read 'Fuckdoll,' but it doesn't feel 
right, somehow."
	"Huh," I neutralled.
	"Yeah," she said, adding nothing.
	"Why's that?" I prodded, finally.
	"Well . . . it's just not entirely honest. It's a good song, I like it, but it doesn't give a . . . 
complete picture, I guess. It presents one perspective really . . . strongly, but I think it's too 
simple. 'Cause I was feeling more than that, it was a lot more complex, and that song is only 
one of the voices in my head. But it was the least compromising voice."
	"Compromising . . . to who?" 
	"To the idea of being a strong woman, I guess. But since then, I've revised what I think 
a strong woman is. All the conflicting ideas and desires, paradoxical even, have to be a part of 
the equation."
	"So it's not really a mellowing-with-age thing . . ."
	"What have you got there?" Cass asked.
	I didn't know what I had. "Got where?"
	"It's a fork. Be careful," Cass said.
	I couldn't decide if the conversation had taken a turn for the surreal or if I had missed 
something. A fork in the theoretical argument?
	"Can you say fork, Jessy?"
	"Fork," I said. "I can. Fork fork, fork fork fork."
	"Sorry," Cass said. "No. No mellowing. My feminist ideals are more firmly integrated 
with my day-to-day life now than then. I've just got away from the wartime mentality, the girls 
versus boys stuff."
	Her vocabulary and intelligence were giving me a buzz. I curled up on my bed. I 
managed to say, "You just said the F-word. I'm supposed to be alarmed by that. It says so in 
the Boys' Manual."
	She laughed. "You're fucked anyway. I'm sure it forbids revealing your superpowers to 
feminists."
	"Oh, shit. I'm in the soup now."
	"'In the soup.' Great phrase."
	"Yeah," I said glumly, "but all the great phrases in the world won't help me in front of 
the Boys' High Tribunal, as I'm arraigned for my indiscretions."
	"Not even 'The feminazi used alien mind-control tricks'? 'Cause I did, you know."
	"Well, maybe that."
	By the time Jess's bedtime rolled around and she had to go, I was feeling like this was 
the best conversation I had ever had. I put the phone in its cradle, content to never have it ring 
again.
	
	On V-Day, Phil was sitting out on the stoop, watching the cars. I removed his toque 
and dropped it in his lap, then sat beside him.
	"Stop it," he said with an absurdly exaggerated petulance.
	"Waitin' fer Melissa?"
	He nodded.
	"Have a nice night planned?" I said, sarcasming the words past saturation point.
	He nodded. "Yep."
	Jack came out. "Oh, waiting for your chariot, *boy* friend?"
	"Yep. Where you guys headed?"
	"Not that it concerns the likes of you," I said, "Mr. Well Adjusted, Mr. Unavailable, 
Mr. Sexually Satisfied --"
	"Mr. Boyfriend," spat Jack.
	"-- but we're headed to the FUCK LOVE Bitter Hearts Reading at Who's Emma."
	Phil nodded. "*That* thing. The Punk Singles Night, you mean?"
	I laughed, but Jack glowered.
	"What are you bitter about, anyway?" Phil said to me. "I thought you had something 
with the Sok waitress."
	"She asked me to this thing," I said, beaming foolishly. "I'm just bitter by habit. I don't 
want to break Jack's mood. He's gotta get psyched up. Otherwise I'd mention that this is the 
first time I've ever had a date on Valentine's Day."
	They looked at me. Jack said, "I think it's better that way, sometimes, not to know 
what you're missing --"
	"Bull*shit* . Every movie, every story, every goddamned *commercial* has some 
element affirming the importance of capital-L-love. My ignorance doesn't save me," I said, "any 
more than it saves the Cuban from dreaming about capitalist riches."
	"That's the spirit, Ryan," said Jack, slapping me on the shoulder.
	"What a convoluted analogy," said Phil.
	"Well, you'll have a lot of time to untangle it," I said, going down the stairs. "As you sit 
here alone all night. Melissa's not coming."
	Jack walked after me.
	When we hit the sidewalk I turned around and looked at Phil's hunched form. He 
waved. I shook my head, and Jack pushed me ahead.
	"Don't waste your time with him," he said. "So did you get her a valentine?"
	"I'm not telling you."
	"That's the same as saying yes."
	"If I say yes you'll want to see it, and if you criticize it, it'll make me incredibly nervous. 
I'm very susceptible to criticism."
	"You're also susceptible to wussyism, it seems." Jack was in one of his rare bantering 
moods, perhaps to distract himself.
	"OK, Mr. Ironman, show me the poems you're going to read."
	"Point made," he said, suddenly frozen.
	A pause. I tried to think of something soothing to say, but all that came into my mind 
was *So is Val gonna be there?* and that would just key him up tighter.
	"Oh!" I remembered the cock ring story, and debated telling it. Would it be too 
gossipy? I hated gossip. But I figured that it didn't really reflect badly on anyone.
	Jack was looking at me. "Oh what?"
	"So we were at this cheesy bar, right, Phil and I? And there's this vending machine . . ." 
and I told the story in its unedited glory -- complete with the father's anguished bellowing at the 
sky.
	By the time it was finished, we had arrived.
	The smokers were clustered around the picnic table, looking cold but more cheerful 
than before, as if they sensed the end of winter. Ken was among them.
	"Hey dudes," Ken said to us, doing a robotic dance move and laughing at our 
immobility. He had a steaming mug in one hand and a wispy cig in the other.
	"Hi, Mr. Pants. How are your pants selling?" I inquired.
	"Totally badly," Ken said. "I keep wearing them out. How you doing, Jacky? Haven't 
seen your ugly mug around for a while."
	Jack pulled his hat down to his eyebrows and gave Ken a dockworker's glare. Ken 
said *Blaaah!* and recoiled.
	"Let's go in let's go in," I said, doing the cold dance. We entered the store and there 
were people of varied acquaintanceship -- met-onces, seen-arounds and utter-strangers. No 
Cassandras, though. I smiled and nodded to the met-onces, specifically Val and Mark, and 
side-glanced at Jack to see him take off his pulled-down hat and greet Val with an almost smile. 
Val motioned us downstairs, so we obediently squeezed by the number of people chatting and 
flipping through records and headed down the stairs.
	The basement was tiny, but carpeted and warm. A number of people looked at us as 
we descended, none of them Cassandra. I checked my watch.
	I found some space and hunkered down. Jack sat, very close to the neighbouring 
people. "You've got some room over there," hissed Jack.
	"'S'for Cassandra," I whispered too, though I didn't know why. The people had all 
decided to face one wall, the one that had a FUCK LOVE banner.
	"*Sure* it is."
	"Fuck off. Shouldn't you be rehearsing or something?"
	Jack pulled a sheaf out of his jacket. He unfolded it and pointed one typed line out to 
me: *for Val.* 
	"Uh oh," I said.
	"Yep," he said gravely. "Uh oh is right."
	No wonder he was all nerves. "Couldn't you . . . do it less publicly? Do something less . 
. . insane? Like get a tattoo or something?" I was starting to get contact hysteria.
	He shook his head.
	"Why?" I said.
	"I'm not going to read the dedication. But there's details in it that will tip her off, and 
probably Mark too."
	That lessened it a bit. "But you're not going to stare at her or anything, are you?"
	The look he gave me was scornful.
	I almost repeated my appeal, but my initial shock had lessened and had been replaced 
by a clinical interest.
	"She asked for bitter love poetry," Jack said. "I get home one day and Phil told me 
she's called. I was so happy. So I call her and it's about this -- she wants me to read some 
bitter love poetry. And I realized, she has *no -- fuckin' -- idea* . . ." Jack shook the look of 
amazement off his face. "So I decided to do it."
	A foot tapped my hip. "Make room, Flyboy." It was Cassandra -- she must have made 
her way across to us while I was boggling about Jack's kamikaze poetics. I bumped Jack over, 
and the people next to him gave up some inches. 
	Cassandra wedged into the space. "Were you saving a space for someone without 
hips?" she asked.
	"It was just a token space I was saving, not meant for human use," I said. "It was 
representational."
	She smiled as she unwound her scarf. Her red cheeks made her look exceedingly 
healthy, and her lips were tough and desirable. *You look so beautiful* , I didn't say.
	"I like your hat," I said. It was a jaunty little red beret. "It sets off your cheeks," I 
added, with a little more panache.
	"Yeah, that was the plan. I took the weather into account when I threw together this 
ensemble," she said, with maybe a trace of pleased embarrassment. She removed the rest of her 
things, the hat last.
	They were fiddling with stuff at the front, microphones and the like. *Now or never* , I 
thought, and pulled out the small envelope and gave it to her, not looking. When she was 
occupied with opening and looking at it, I dared a glance: she was grinning.
	It was one of those elementary school Valentine's Day cards, with a boy and a girl 
holding hands on it. I didn't write anything on it. I was scared. "Had one left over from Grade 
four," I said gruffly.
	I felt a hand on my chest and I looked down. She was pressing a small heart to my 
chest. She hit me with it again and I took it. It was a collage of alien images, from the Martian-
style to ones from *Dr. Who* to the "modern" image. I flipped it over and there were all sorts 
of fly images, illustrations from textbooks and photos and cartoons.
	"This is . . ." *so much better than mine* , I thought, " . . . amazing."
	"Put it away," she said out the side of her mouth. "Remember where we are."
	"Right," I said, and tucked it into a pocket. "Oh! This is my roommate Jack," I said, 
and introduced them. "Jack's about to do something stupid but brave," I said.
	Val took the stage. Jack's nostrils visibly flared.
	*Damned holiday* , I thought, telling the divine-throated cherubim stowaways in my 
head to keep it down.
	
	The kettle squealed and Cassandra got up and lifted it with one hand, flipped a cassette 
tape with the other. She pulled down some mugs and teabagged them, then filled them. She 
didn't ask me what I wanted.
	"I've only got raspberry, hope that's all right."
	Her kitchen, which she had suggested instead of a café, was warm and painted with 
earthy brown-reds. As I looked around, the music started -- a lazy guitar and a lazier singer that 
I didn't recognize.
	"Pavement," she said, nodding to the tape player. "I didn't think much of this until 
maybe the fifth listen, then it just made me smile and smile. The lyrics are fairly unfathomable."
	"Lyrics are pretty big for me. If it's got good lyrics, it almost doesn't matter what it 
sounds like. But I'm not a musician." I said it with a flourish that added, *like you are* .
	"Neither am I. I just play music."
	"Yeah, but you can appreciate chord changies and stuff."
	"Changies?"
	I laughed. "Yeah, everything's with a 'y' after I hang out with Ken. Wasn't he 
awesome?" He had read out, panel-by-panel, some of his love-themed comics. 
	"He was great -- he has this incredible physical craziness. He's such a natural 
performer." Cassandra's eyes sparkled over the rim of her mug. "Oh! And did you see the 
older couple I was talking to?"
	I nodded. A robust man and a woman with a lacy hat.
	"Well, I'd seen them at stuff before, and I noticed Ken left his bag with them. So I 
asked them how they knew Ken. And they said, 'We made him.'"
	"His parents?"
	"Yeah! What an amazing thing to say. 'We made him.' I think I saw them at another 
reading that Val put on. Hers was good, eh? You could really tell she'd read before."
	"Yeah. I wonder if it was about Mark? Or some other guy?" I had problems imagining 
Mark inspiring tender emotions, somehow.
	Cassandra shrugged her shoulders, a smile playing about her lips.
	"What?" I finally asked.
	"Just that you assume it would be a guy," she said, looking amused.
	"Huh," I said, not knowing whether to apologize or what. I wondered if there was a 
chapter on it in *The Female Eunuch* , which sat unopened beside my bed.
	"It's true," I said. "I'm pretty stupid when it comes to those things. I don't have any 
openly gay friends. One of my friends I suspect is a lesbian, but she's only made these broad 
hints . . ."
	"A *suspected* dyke, eh?" she said, smiling, seemingly enjoying watching me squirm. 
"It wouldn't be that blonde you were with at Sok, would it?"
	"Yeah!" I blurted, stunned at her perceptiveness and then at my indiscretion.
	"She gave me a few looks. She seemed a little queer. But it doesn't mean she's a 
lesbian. She could be bi. Bi like me." She watched me calmly as she said this, and I didn't know 
if it was to gauge my reaction or to show she wasn't timid about it.
	"Bi Like Me," I repeated. "Sounds like it has potential to be a book *and* a major 
motion picture." 
	She chuckled, and looked into her empty mug. She got up and refilled it from the kettle 
and offered some water to me. I declined.
	I felt a need to talk about my orientation, but whether it was to match confidences or 
differentiate myself I wasn't sure. "It's never been an issue for me. I can't even tell a good-
looking guy from an ugly one." 
	Cassandra just looked at me. 
	"I know it's weird for a woman, because women can always tell which women are 
good-looking, but I just can't tell. Does this sound like denial to you?" 
	Cassandra shook her head. "It's kind of like a colour-blind person trying to convince a 
cop that the red and the green light look the same."
	I nodded. "That's a really good way to put it."
	"While I, on the other hand, explain that they both look green to me."
	Something occurred to me, and put a twisted smile on my mug. I almost didn't say it, 
but then I did. "But with the alien encounter, wouldn't your orientation be 'tri'?"
	She smiled broadly and slumped to be able to give me a kick in the shins. "Have you 
had sex as a fly?"
	"Fuck no!" I said. "Bleaah! No way!"
	"Why not?"
	"'Cause I try to spend as little time as possible as a bug. I don't even eat, because 
garbage and rotting meat is what looks good to me as a fly. A fresh apple tastes like plastic."
	"So you haven't experimented at all? Like to find out if you eat a lot as a fly if you're full 
when you switch back to human, stuff like that?"
	I shook my head, hoping that she wouldn't ask me to. I imagined her horrified look as I 
re-humaned in front of her, naked but for disgusting globs of fly goop.
	"*I've* been experimenting," she said. 
	I raised my eyebrows. 
	She picked up a spoon on the table and tossed it my way. "Hold that under the table." I 
did. "See, like it is, I can't make it disappear.'Cause I can't see it."
	I nodded, hoping my face was calm. *God, I hope she can do it. I don't want this 
wonderful girl to be delusional. Although it would account for her interest in me* , a nasty part 
of me poked.
	"Now hold it just a little above the table, so I can just see a bit." I did, and held onto the 
rest with a fist. "OK," she said, looking at it with half-lidded eyes. "Ready?"
	I nodded, and the silver spoon disappeared. I held up my fist to look at it, and she gave 
a small laugh. "Weird, huh?" I opened my hand to see if there was any residue, and there 
wasn't. I almost looked at the floor but then thought that was silly.
	"Check this out . . ." She reached over and grabbed my arm and pushed my sleeve up. 
Her hands were smooth and warm. "Now this is a trick that I wish I knew when I was a self-
conscious teenager. It would have saved me a lot of pain."
	I looked down at my bushy arm and suddenly a circle the size of a dime appeared in the 
hair. I touched it -- it was smooth and sensitive, but I could feel tiny stubble.
	"It didn't go beyond the surface," I said. "You can feel that it didn't take it down to the 
root," I said, and Cassandra touched it. I kept my arm as still as my rabbit-heart would allow, 
and with all my mental power willed her to keep her skin on mine.
	She traced the perimeter of the circle, slowly. "And around the edge the hair is only half 
gone, so the circle comes out right." She looked up quickly and caught my half-drugged look.
	She seemed amused. "What, is your forearm an erogenous zone?"
	*Wherever you touch me is an erogenous zone* . "I don't know," I said, quickly pulling 
down my sleeve and looking down at the table. I wished I had jacked off last night. My head 
felt like it was packed, ear to ear, with stupid horny sperm, all attacking my tiny brain as if 
mistaking it for an ovum.
	Cassandra picked up our mugs and carried them to the sink. I waited for the *Well, I 
should be getting to sleep* dismissal.
	"Let's go to the living room," was what she said, and I felt excitement and anxiety at the 
same time.
	Her living room was well named -- it was exceptionally livable. Her couch was the 
epitome of comfy, a huge soft overstuffed patchwork beast. I made a beeline for it, tucking 
myself into a corner. She sat in the middle, turning herself towards me.
	"OK, so the two of us have these incredible abilities, right?" She held her hands palms-
upward as she said this.
	"Right."
	"We have to face facts. We're superheroes." 
	I shrugged. "Or freaks."
	"No, if we had, like, a third eye that let us see into the future, we'd be freaks. As it is, 
we're completely normal when we want to be." Her face was very convincing.
	I had always felt more freak than hero, but it was hard to explain. It was just an 
emotional thing.
	"So why don't the two of us go out there and fight evil?" She said it with a smirk but her 
sincerity was plain. Other than the "two of us" part -- which I liked -- the suggestion induced 
the mental equivalent of watching a wall of a hundred TV sets, all tuned to different channels. 
Too much, too much. Too much to process.
	Another part of me acknowledged that she was right. But I had many issues of my own 
to deal with -- my mom being the biggest one. "It's just . . . with my mom and everything . . ." I 
had told her about that on our way here. And it sort of felt like an excuse, mentioning it so soon.
	Cass nodded. "But there's nothing you can do about that."
	Of course not, I thought. I was almost angry she had pointed it out, but that was stupid 
too."I've been conscious of my fly-thing" (I wasn't gonna call it *superpower* ) "for my whole 
life. It's been enough for me to keep it a secret and try to research possible causes of it. I just 
want to keep out of trouble and the tabloids, Cassandra."
	She laughed. "MAN CAN TURN INTO FLY: Wants quiet life, tells reporters."
	"They'd have a field day with you, too, Alien Consort."
	She was silent for a moment. "Why do you wear that?" She pointed to my Sailor Moon 
ring.
	"It's to show my resistance to market trends, by ironically enjoying programming 
entirely outside my predicted demographic," I fluidly lied.
	She rolled her eyes. "Bullshit."
	"I'm a pedophile?"
	She shook her head.
	The extreme answers considered beforehand, the pure and the greasy one, were not 
true. Now I thought of something middling, yet somehow even more embarrassing. "Because I 
identify with Sailor Moon?!"
	"Exactly. A bumbling little girl with all the wrong priorities becomes a hero. Admit that 
that appeals to you."
	"Never," I said glumly.
	Cassandra twist-pinched my arm.
	"Ow ow ow OK! A little." She let go and I rubbed my arm.
	"So are we a dynamic duo?" She looked at me with a bright-eyed grin and I realized 
that I did, indeed, want to be involved with this person, whatever she did. 
	I shrugged my shoulders and grinned back. "All right."
	She sat back, relaxing her huckster pose. "So," she said, folding her arms and then 
unfolding them. "How do we seal this pact?"
	I looked at her serious eyes.
	I moved my head forward, infinitesimally. *Would removing my glasses be 
presumptuous?* was the thing I thought just before she kissed me. I managed to come to life 
halfway through, and it was over, her dragging away with a slight tugging on my lip.
	"There," she said, and I moved forward and kissed her before her mouth could close 
over the word, Indiana Jones rolling under the stone door at the last second. I took off my 
glasses then, lifted my hand to touch her chin and kissed her smile, sliding my hand back past 
her jawbone to the back of her neck, stopping there and stroking that secret place. 
	She bent over and kissed my neck. Jesus. I jerked involuntarily -- I'm ticklish. She 
pulled away, and my lips wouldn't form the words, *No, god I like that, keep doing that* , but 
I could look at her and kiss her there, under the ear, pull at her earlobe with my lips. "I can't 
believe you like me back," I said to her in a groggy, quiet voice. 
	It was then that I felt that this had been my whole life, an unspoken quest to find 
someone who *liked me back* . I hugged her and hugged her and that was it and that was 
enough.
	But the way she rubbed her leg up between my legs was pretty nice too.
	
	The next day was a bit of a write-off. I was cleaning the bathroom since it was my turn 
and because I was too happy to do school work. Pulling hair from the drain, on the other hand, 
was perfectly OK for my mood.
	Phil opened the door.
	"Lucky I wasn't cleaning the floor," I said. "Don't you usually knock on closed 
bathroom doors?"
	Phil put the lid down on the toilet and sat on it. "Jack told me you were finally cleaning 
the bathroom."
	"He said that? 'Finally'?" Jack was really good with cleaning up and I felt like I was a 
dodger in comparison. He *was* home all the time, mind you.
	"Well, no, but he should have."
	I was pulling out a tremendous rope of hair, soapy and multicoloured. It's quite a 
challenge to get as much of it out as possible, and I prided myself on my patient but firm pulling 
technique.
	"I always think that if you pull it all out, you'll find a shrunken head at the bottom," Phil 
said.
	"Ahh," I said, lifting a good half-footer out of the tub. I put it in the garbage rather than 
the toilet. I used to flush it, but then I imagined that it would c